Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Telugu live captions and productivity tool for job interviews

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

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Captio AI app showing live captions

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Use Cases

Every situation covered

Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.

👔In-person interviews

In a Hyderabad or Vijayawada office — an interviewer speaking formal Telugu at professional pace. Captio AI captions every question in real time so you read the full sentence before responding.

💻Video interviews

Zoom or Google Meet in Telugu corporate environments — from Hyderabad IT firms to Andhra Pradesh government interviews. Follow every question in real time without asking for repeats.

📞Phone screens and initial calls

HR screening calls in Telugu — fast, formal, often mixed with English. Captio AI captions the recruiter's voice in real time so compressed audio and code-switching do not become barriers.

👥Panel interviews

Panel interviews at large Telangana and Andhra Pradesh employers. Captio AI follows each panelist's question even as they switch between Telugu and English mid-conversation.

🌍International and foreign-language interviews

For roles at Hyderabad multinationals where interviews move between Telugu and English. Live Translator handles both in the same session without any manual switching.

🎯Assessment centres

Group discussions — common in Indian banking and management graduate hiring. Captio AI covers the facilitator's instructions and participant contributions throughout.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Telugu
91.8%

word accuracy

independent benchmark, 2025

< 200ms
you speak
captions

real-time captions

first word appears as you speak

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Captio AI in everyday use
Why Captio AI

Built for the room where a missed word has real consequences

Read the full question before you answer

Every word appears on screen as the interviewer speaks. You read the question completely before responding — nothing guessed, nothing reconstructed.

Works in person and on any call format

In-person interviews, video calls, phone screens. Place the phone on the table or point it toward the audio — Captio AI handles every format.

Discreet by design

The app runs quietly on your phone. Place it on the table or hold it naturally. No explanation needed, no drawing attention to the accommodation.

No asking for repeats

Asking an interviewer to repeat a question signals uncertainty. Captio AI means you never need to — you read it in real time and answer with confidence.

Any language

For international roles, multilingual panels, or interviews conducted in a second language. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so language is never the barrier.

Private by default

Interview conversations are sensitive. Captio AI processes audio in real time and discards it immediately — nothing is stored, nothing is shared.

Telugu

Why Telugu is hard to understand

Consonant gemination

  • Double consonants change meaning but look identical on the lips
  • Telugu uses consonant gemination — doubled consonants — to distinguish word meanings. 'Padi' (ten) and 'paddi' differ in consonant length. The geminate is produced acoustically by holding the consonant position longer, but the lip shape is identical to the singleton. In a formal Telugu interview, a deaf candidate cannot visually distinguish geminate from singleton consonants in real-time speech.

Agglutinative morphology

  • Long suffix chains produce rapid syllable sequences in fast speech
  • Telugu is highly agglutinative — verb roots take sequences of tense, aspect, person, number, and gender suffixes stacked in order. In an interview question, the verb at the end of the sentence may be a single long agglutinated word. Lip-reading a 6–8 syllable Telugu verb form requires tracking each morpheme in rapid succession with no pause between units.

Formal diglossia

  • Grandhika formal Telugu and everyday Vyanavahara are different registers
  • Telugu has a significant diglossia gap: Grandhika (classical literary Telugu) is used in formal writing, official speech, and interviews, while Vyanavahara (colloquial) is everyday conversation. Interview vocabulary in formal Telugu contexts may use literary roots and case endings that don't appear in casual speech. A deaf candidate who lip-reads everyday Telugu faces unfamiliar word forms in a formal interview.

Telugu-English switching

  • Hyderabad IT interviews mix Telugu and English unpredictably
  • In Hyderabad's large technology sector — one of India's major IT hubs — Telugu and English mix routinely within the same interview sentence. A question may begin in Telugu and end with an English technical term or vice versa. A deaf candidate tracking one language is suddenly watching the other.

Retroflex and aspirated stops

  • Telugu shares South Asian invisibility problems for key consonant contrasts
  • Telugu distinguishes retroflex consonants (ట, ఠ, డ, ఢ) from dental/alveolar counterparts, and aspirated from unaspirated stops. Both contrasts are acoustic — produced by tongue position and breath respectively — and both look identical on the lips. In formal interview vocabulary, these contrasts carry meaning that cannot be recovered from visual observation alone.

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The Challenge

63 million with hearing loss in India — and Telangana's IT boom hasn't made hiring accessible

India has an estimated 63 million people with significant hearing loss, distributed across all states including Telangana and Andhra Pradesh — two states that together form one of India's major IT employment corridors centred on Hyderabad. The Deaf Enabled Foundation, based in South India and operating across Telangana, provides vocational training and placement services for deaf candidates. Despite this infrastructure, the interview process at most Hyderabad IT companies, financial firms, and public-sector employers does not include captioning or sign language interpretation as a standard offering.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act 2016 mandates a 4% employment quota in government jobs and requires reasonable accommodation for disabled workers. In practice, private-sector implementation is uneven. Deaf candidates applying to Hyderabad's major tech companies face an interview structure — technical rounds, HR discussions, group exercises — that is designed around spoken communication. Requesting captioning in advance is uncommon and can introduce bias. Not requesting it means managing the interview without support.

The linguistic structure of Telugu amplifies the practical barrier. Formal interview Telugu draws on Grandhika vocabulary unfamiliar from everyday colloquial speech. Technical interviews in Hyderabad's IT sector frequently mix Telugu and English mid-sentence. And Telugu's agglutinative morphology means key information — the verb and its tense, person, and aspect — arrives at the end of a long sentence in a single compressed word. Captio AI requires no employer arrangement: place the phone on the desk, and every Telugu sentence — including the final agglutinated verb — appears in real time.

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Privacy

What you hear stays with you.

Gone the moment it ends

Captio AI processes your audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded. Nothing is kept.

Not a product

Your conversations are not something Captio AI sells, shares, or monetizes — to anyone, for any reason.

Not used to train anything

What you say in a doctor's appointment or a job interview never ends up in a training dataset. Not ours. Not anyone else's.

100% PRIVATE

Private by default

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Reviews

People love Captio AI

"The IT interview switched between Telugu and English every few sentences. Captio AI kept up with both. I answered every technical question clearly and made it through to the offer."

Lakshmi R. 🇮🇳
lakshmi.r***@gmail.com
Moderate hearing loss, Hyderabad

"Formal Telugu interviews use Grandhika vocabulary I had never lip-read before. Captio AI gave me every word. For the first time I could focus on what I wanted to say instead of what I was trying to hear."

Ravi K. 🇮🇳
ravi.k***@gmail.com
Sensorineural hearing loss since birth, Vijayawada

"The phone screen was in Telugu — fast, formal, and over a mobile line. Captio AI captioned every word. I answered every question correctly and was invited to the panel stage."

Divya P. 🇮🇳
divya.p***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Hyderabad

"The group discussion had candidates switching between Telugu and English at speed. Captio AI tracked whoever was speaking and I contributed to every point. The panel noted I was one of the most engaged participants."

Sai T. 🇮🇳
sai.t***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Hyderabad

"The IT interview switched between Telugu and English every few sentences. Captio AI kept up with both. I answered every technical question clearly and made it through to the offer."

Lakshmi R. 🇮🇳
lakshmi.r***@gmail.com
Moderate hearing loss, Hyderabad

"Formal Telugu interviews use Grandhika vocabulary I had never lip-read before. Captio AI gave me every word. For the first time I could focus on what I wanted to say instead of what I was trying to hear."

Ravi K. 🇮🇳
ravi.k***@gmail.com
Sensorineural hearing loss since birth, Vijayawada

"The phone screen was in Telugu — fast, formal, and over a mobile line. Captio AI captioned every word. I answered every question correctly and was invited to the panel stage."

Divya P. 🇮🇳
divya.p***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Hyderabad

"The group discussion had candidates switching between Telugu and English at speed. Captio AI tracked whoever was speaking and I contributed to every point. The panel noted I was one of the most engaged participants."

Sai T. 🇮🇳
sai.t***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Hyderabad

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Hear every question in Telugu.

Captio AI is free to start

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