Avaz — India's First AAC App Giving Non-Verbal Children a Voice in Six Regional Languages

Invention Labs, founded by IIT Madras graduate Ajit Narayanan, built Avaz — an electronic augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app that turns symbol sequences into speech for children with autism, cerebral palsy, Angelman syndrome, Down syndrome and aphasia. Unlike imported AAC tools, Avaz was designed from the outset in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu and Marathi, with further localisation into Gujarati and Bengali, addressing the fact that most global AAC software launched only in English.
The product won the Indian President's National Award for Empowerment of People with Disabilities in 2010, and Narayanan was named to MIT Technology Review's "35 Innovators Under 35" in 2011. The company raised $550,000 in seed funding in 2014 from Inventus Capital, Mumbai Angels and other investors to expand distribution.
More than a decade on, Avaz continues to sell into special-needs classrooms in the United States and is recommended for use in Indian special schools, making it one of the longest-running Southern-origin AAC products still in active commercial use — though, as with most AAC apps, no independently published outcome study of communication gains was found during this review.

Read the full analysis: https://avazapp.com/products/avaz-aac-app/