Malayalam live captions and productivity tool for phone & video calls
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Everything you need to follow Malayalam phone & video calls
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Malayalam speakers.
Follow the call in real time
- Captions appear word by word as the other person speaks
- Works on any call — no app integration required
- Put the call on speaker and point the microphone toward it
- Handles compressed call audio accurately
International and foreign-language calls
- They speak their language — you read in yours
- Translates in real time as they speak
- 60+ languages, no setup
- For family abroad, international business, or travel
Transcribe any call recording
- Record the call and upload for a complete written transcript
- Review instructions, information, and decisions after
- Organised by speaker
- Works on any call recording
Key information extracted from any call
- Important points pulled from any call transcript
- Useful for medical calls, customer service, and work calls
- Organised into clear sections
- Works on any saved recording
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
A call with family in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, or Kozhikode where fast, warm Malayalam moves between formal and colloquial registers.
A work call with Malayalam-speaking colleagues at an IT firm or business in Kerala where formal and colloquial Malayalam mix with English.
A callback from a hospital in Kochi or Thiruvananthapuram where a doctor delivers test results and treatment instructions in clinical Malayalam.
A call to a Kerala State Electricity Board office or bank helpline where Standard Malayalam is used in the automated menu.
A call from a family member working in the Gulf — in Dubai, Kuwait, or Riyadh — who mixes Malayalam with Gulf Arabic phrases.
A WhatsApp video call with family in Kerala where the connection is solid but two or three family members speak at once in different regional accents.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Built for the calls you have been avoiding
Captions as they speak
Words appear on screen word by word while the other person is still talking. You read what they say at the same pace everyone else hears it — no delay, no reconstruction.
Works on any call app
Captio AI does not need to integrate with any platform. Put the call on speaker, point the microphone toward the audio, and read the captions. It works the same way for any app on any device.
No more asking for repeats
Every word is on screen as it is said. If you missed something, glance at the caption rather than interrupting the call — the full sentence is there.
Handles call audio accurately
Compressed phone audio is less clean than in-person speech. Captio AI is built for real-world audio conditions, including the reduced quality of standard phone and VoIP calls.
Any language
For calls with family abroad, international colleagues, or foreign-language customer service. Live Translator captions and translates in real time with no manual setup.
Record and review after
Record any call and upload it to Audio Transcription. Get a full written record of everything said — useful for medical instructions, work decisions, and anything worth having in writing.
Why Malayalam is hard to understand
Three-way retroflex series
- Dental, alveolar, and retroflex distinctions produce identical lip shapes
- Malayalam maintains a three-way phonemic contrast between dental, alveolar, and retroflex nasals and laterals. These distinctions are articulated behind the teeth and produce near-identical lip shapes on a video call. A deaf caller loses the entire retroflex layer — yet it carries both lexical and grammatical information.
Vowel length collapse
- Short and long vowels merge in fast phone call speech
- Malayalam phonemically distinguishes short and long vowels across its inventory. In casual phone call speed, long vowels shorten toward their short counterparts. A deaf caller watching lip shape gets the same visual vowel in both cases — but the word meaning differs. Research on Malayalam vowel identification in individuals with hearing loss has documented this as a specific barrier.
Geminate consonants
- Double consonants sound different but look the same
- Malayalam has phonemic consonant length — geminate consonants are held longer than single ones and carry lexical meaning. The duration difference is audible but produces no visible length signal at the lips. On a video call, two words that differ only in consonant length look identical from the screen.
Malabar-Travancore dialect gap
- Northern and southern Kerala Malayalam sound perceptibly different
- Malayalam dialects range from Malabar (northern Kerala) to Travancore (southern Kerala) with differences in vowel quality, consonant realization, and lexical density. A phone call from Kozhikode sounds perceptibly different from one from Thiruvananthapuram — for a deaf caller who has learned one variety, the other presents fresh phonological challenges.
Tamil-Malayalam code-switching
- Border and diaspora calls pivot between two Dravidian systems
- In border regions and diaspora communities, Malayalam-Tamil code-switching is common. Both languages share Dravidian phonology but have different retroflex inventories and prosodic patterns. A deaf caller navigating a call that pivots from Malayalam to Tamil has no visual warning of the phonological shift.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreOver sixty million Indians with hearing loss — and Malayalam-speaking Keralites navigate a uniquely complex phonological system
Approximately 63 million people in India live with significant auditory impairment — 6.3% of the national population — and hearing disability is the second most common cause of disability in the country. Hearing loss prevalence among rural communities reaches 310 per 100,000, compared to 236 per 100,000 in urban areas. Kerala, though among India's most literate and health-conscious states, contains substantial rural communities where audiological services are concentrated in larger cities. Research on vowel identification among Malayalam-speaking individuals with hearing loss has documented the specific way Malayalam's vowel length contrasts — a phonemic distinction between short and long versions of each vowel — erode for people with hearing difficulty, compounding the challenge of following fast conversational Malayalam.
The estimated prevalence of adult-onset hearing loss in India is 7.6% and childhood-onset hearing loss is 2%. India's National Programme for Prevention and Control of Deafness targets early detection and intervention across states. For Kerala's Malayali deaf and hard-of-hearing adults, the practical consequence is disproportionate reliance on family members to facilitate medical calls, government consultations, and phone interactions with the large Malayali diaspora working in the Gulf. Malayalam is the primary language for approximately 35 million people in Kerala and a further 2 million in the Gulf diaspora alone.
Captio AI captions every Malayalam call in real time — so a deaf family member in Thiruvananthapuram or in the Gulf diaspora can follow the conversation without asking anyone to repeat themselves.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreWhat 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.
Private by default
Download on theApp StoreCaptio AI supports 60+ languages
People love Captio AI
"My father speaks northern Kerala Malayalam and my mother is from Thiruvananthapuram. On calls with both of them the dialect switches constantly. Captio AI follows both varieties. I understand the full conversation."
"Work calls in IT in Kochi mix Malayalam and English at full speed. The retroflex consonants are impossible for me to distinguish without captions. Captio AI gets them right every time."
"The hospital called with my MRI results in clinical Malayalam. Very fast, very formal, words I did not recognise. Captio AI showed the full transcript. I read it to my doctor at the follow-up and she was impressed."
"I call family in Kerala from Dubai every week. They speak Malabar dialect, I have adapted to Gulf Malayalam over the years. Captio AI shows both varieties correctly. The calls feel like being home."
"My father speaks northern Kerala Malayalam and my mother is from Thiruvananthapuram. On calls with both of them the dialect switches constantly. Captio AI follows both varieties. I understand the full conversation."
"Work calls in IT in Kochi mix Malayalam and English at full speed. The retroflex consonants are impossible for me to distinguish without captions. Captio AI gets them right every time."
"The hospital called with my MRI results in clinical Malayalam. Very fast, very formal, words I did not recognise. Captio AI showed the full transcript. I read it to my doctor at the follow-up and she was impressed."
"I call family in Kerala from Dubai every week. They speak Malabar dialect, I have adapted to Gulf Malayalam over the years. Captio AI shows both varieties correctly. The calls feel like being home."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Follow every call in Malayalam.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store