Few days ago I have had the pleasure to interview Pramit Bhargava, the creator of Louie voice Assistant.
You can listen this interview in order to learn more about him but also to find out some answers about this app and its future.
But I will leave Pramit to talk about his background and how Louie came to life
I’m Pramit, Founder of Louie Voice Control which allows the users to do each & everything within supported Apps with just voice commands.
I would like to share with you why I started developing apps for the visually impaired. The side-effect of medicine that I took in 1999 impacted my Retina and my vision has been dramatically declining ever since. By 2012, I was not able to read anything. At that point, I felt completely miserable and did not know what to do next.
This low-point was completely unexpected especially for someone who had graduated from India’s prestigious engineering and management institutions (IIT and IIM) and worked for global companies such as Unilever, Motorola, and Quest Diagnostics. I wasn’t able to come to terms with this situation.
However, as I look back now, I believe that this phase guided me towards a higher purpose in life rather than chasing traditional career goals and materialistic successes. I also got involved in spirituality, meditation during this challenging phase, and started understanding the true purpose of my life.
One might say that my next phase was driven by a series of coincidences. But, I consider it as divine help that led me to a senior executive of a Top Venture Capital Company who encouraged me to work on Apps to solve the problems that I and other visually impaired individuals face across the world.
With that one meeting, Louie was born.
The aha moment for Louie Voice Control came when a sighted friend was booking a Uber ride for me. He kept asking me questions and then, he made the appropriate selections. In a matter of minutes, the booking was done! I wondered how empowering it would be especially for the visually impaired if the phone were to read out the menu options and then, accept my verbal responses as inputs and make the booking.
Louie is all about being able to operate popular Apps and do everything within those Apps using voice commands. As of today, Louie supports YouTube, WhatsApp, Uber, Contacts & Phone Calling. More Apps are under development.
Louie is an accessibility App and can be used by all voice-lovers including but not limited to visually impaired, blind, motor-disabled, elderly, people with limited manual dexterity and all hands-free lovers. Louie needs accessibility permissions to operate.
None of the leading Voice Assistants or Personal Assistants (Alexa, Google, Siri) can do what Louie can:
· Voice Assistants tend to be superficial & will allow you to do only 2-3 things within an App. Louie in comparison will fully voice control an App – each and every feature within the App.
· Leading Voice Assistants or Personal Assistants have a nasty habit of going silent every now and then. Louie in comparison will do a two-way continuous interaction – just like a human interaction
Watch Louie in action:
The app is in beta stage and free to install. My aim is to spread the word around so that more and more people use the app and benefit from it.
The app is available for Android devices only but iOS version is coming soon.
The Google Play link for Louie voice Assistant is here.
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