How I built a Hinglish-speaking voice assistant for local grocery stores — and what ten days of #VoiceForBharat taught me about voice AI.
The problem and the users
Most local Kirana (neighbourhood grocery) stores in India still run on phone calls and memory. The shopkeeper remembers what Ramesh usually orders, but there's no system behind that memory — no record of preferences, no way to check stock before promising something, and no help when the owner is busy serving someone else in the shop.
I built Saathi, a voice agent for the Local Commerce track, to be that missing layer. It's designed for customers who are more comfortable talking than typing — especially in Hindi, Hinglish, or a code-mixed version of both — and for a store owner who needs a system that can take routine calls off their hands without ever pretending to be a human or making promises it can't keep.
Voice is the right interface here because it removes the biggest barrier to digital tools in local commerce: literacy and app-navigation friction. If you can make a phone call, you can use Saathi.
