Voice-first AI companion
Less screen. More conversation.
Dhunku is a voice-first companion prototype for children aged 3–10. Your child talks and hears a reply in English, Hindi or Hinglish. The design includes a small round display for expressions and status, not videos or games; the display is not yet validated on hardware.
The idea
Not all time with a device is the same.
Every parent already knows the difference. It is the difference between a child who is being entertained and a child who is being drawn out — and it is not about how many minutes.
With a tablet
Quiet. Tapping. Watching.
They might be focused, they might be somewhere else entirely — from across the room you cannot tell. Words go in. Nothing gets built.
With Dhunku
Thinking out loud.
Arguing that ants are stronger than elephants. Tripping over a word, going back, trying again. Building something out of language that no tapping game ever asked them for.
Children learn a language by using it, not by listening to it. So this one is built to make your child do most of the talking.
How it works
Through conversation, not content.
No character to pick, no card to tap, no activity to launch, no level to unlock. It does not open with a suggestion and it will never ask whether your homework is done. It begins with your child's voice and keeps going for as long as they want.
Ten minutes, no app
Out of the box it makes its own WiFi network. Join it from your phone, the setup page opens by itself, pick your home network and your child's class. That is the whole setup — and if the WiFi ever changes, it reopens that page instead of sitting there beeping.
Press the button
One big button starts a voice-led conversation. The planned round display shows expressions and status, not a menu of games to swipe through.
Say anything
A question, a story, complete nonsense. Half-finished sentences and invented words are fine — that is how children actually talk.
The conversation keeps going
It answers, then asks something back. The conversation keeps moving, and your child does most of the moving.
Why it fits an Indian home
Built for how children here actually speak.
Hinglish, natively
Not "English mode" and "Hindi mode" with a switch between them. One voice that mixes both inside a single sentence, because that is how your child already speaks. "A ke baad kya aata hai?" comes back in the same mix it was asked in. A child switching languages mid-sentence is not confused. They are just being themselves.
It adapts to your child
Their interests, their mood, their pace. A child who loves dinosaurs gets dinosaur stories. A shy child gets gentler, roomier questions.
It celebrates the attempt
Not "Good job!" but "I liked the part where you said your friend was being kind." Every conversation should leave a child a little braver than it found them.
Checked before the AI sees it
A safety check runs on what your child said before any AI model is given the words — not as a filter afterwards. Sensitive moments are handled gently and surfaced to you rather than quietly absorbed.
The meter never runs
Talking is unlimited. There is no per-minute charge, no bundle of talk-time to watch draining, and no moment where a parent quietly hopes a child will wrap it up. A child should never be expensive to talk to.
Voices built for Indian speech
It runs on speech models trained on how India actually sounds, so an accent, a code-switch or a Hindi word mid-sentence is the normal case rather than an edge case.
Conversation logic stays on the server
The design has no camera; the persona, conversation memory and safety checks run on the server. The device stores its own Wi-Fi credentials, device token and child setup details (such as name and interests). Treat a lost or opened device as containing sensitive settings.
What it quietly notices
It follows your child. Not a syllabus.
Your child talks about whatever they want — dinosaurs, a fight at school, why the moon follows the car. It never steers them into a lesson or offers a menu of approved topics. That is the whole design.
Afterwards, it maps where the conversation actually went against your child's own class and board — LKG through Class 10, CBSE, ICSE or your state board. Not to grade them, and not to push them anywhere next. Just so you can see that Tuesday's argument about ants covered more of the science syllabus than the worksheet did.
Their class, their board
You set the class and the board once. What counts as "covered" is measured against the syllabus your child is actually taught, not a generic curriculum.
The child never sees it
No scores, no streaks, no badges, nothing to chase. Your child is having a conversation. The mapping is for you, and it happens after the fact.
Wandering is the point
A conversation that drifts is not a conversation that failed. Children learn sideways, and a tool that keeps pulling them back on topic teaches them to stop wandering.
The voice
One voice. Endless patience.
The same character every time, so your child builds a relationship rather than meeting a stranger each session.
It never gets bored of the same question asked eleven times. It never sighs. It is not trying to keep your child on it for longer — there is no feed here to scroll and nothing to autoplay.
For parents
You see everything. Always.
A companion your child talks to freely is only a good idea if you can see what it said. So the parent app is not an afterthought — it is the point.
Read every conversation
Full transcripts in the parent app. Not summaries, not highlights — everything, in the order it was said.
Voice deleted immediately
Recordings are deleted as soon as they have been understood. Only the text remains, and you can delete that too.
A journal, not a profile
What it remembers is kept as plain sentences you can read — "his dog is called Rocky" — listed one by one and deletable one by one. It is deliberately not a developmental profile or a behavioural score, and anything older than 90 days is swept automatically.
You are told, not scored
If your child mentions being hurt or afraid, it is raised to you at the top of the panel where it cannot be scrolled past. Not a keyword list: "uncle ke ghar jaane se dar lagta hai" is the kind of thing it catches, and "ludo haar gaya" is the kind of thing it deliberately ignores.
A quiet daily read
One digest covering the last day — what was talked about, anything worth your attention. Not a live feed to watch, and nothing that asks you to check it hourly.
Hours you set
Decide when it is awake. Outside those hours it says goodnight rather than going silent, because a toy that stops answering just reads as broken to a five-year-old and they keep trying.
Three ways to delete
Remove a single remembered fact, wipe the whole conversation history, or delete your child's record entirely. All three take one tap, and the last one leaves nothing behind.
No ads. No training on your child.
Nothing your child says is used to train AI models, and nothing is sold to anyone. We take India's child-data rules as a design constraint, not a checkbox.
In the parent app
Everything, in the order it was said.
Transcripts you can read, a concern raised to the top when one matters, and a delete button beside anything you would rather was gone.
Questions parents ask
Ask us anything.
Is this just another gadget in the house?
It is designed around conversation, not a feed or a game to unlock. The planned small round display shows expressions and status; it is not for videos or browsing. The display is still a prototype, not a hardware-validated feature.
What if my child says something upsetting to it?
Sensitive moments are handled gently and are flagged for you in the parent app rather than being quietly absorbed. It will never pretend to be a substitute for you.
Do I need an app to set it up?
No. On first switch-on the device makes its own WiFi network. Join it from any phone, the setup page opens by itself, and you pick your home network and your child's class and board. It saves and restarts. If your WiFi password ever changes, it reopens that same page rather than becoming a paperweight.
Does it teach the school syllabus?
No — and that is deliberate. It never steers your child toward a lesson or offers a menu of topics; it follows whatever they want to talk about. Separately, and only for you, it maps where the conversation went against your child's class and board so you can see what got covered. Your child never sees a score, a streak or a badge. There is nothing to chase.
How quickly does it answer?
It varies. The server can send speech in parts, but the device may buffer the full reply before playback to keep it smooth; it starts early only if the connection is fast enough. An acknowledgement and waiting sound help make a longer wait clear. We cannot promise a particular time yet.
What exactly does it remember, and for how long?
Plain sentences, the kind you could read aloud: your child's name, their age band, that their dog is called Rocky, the story they were halfway through. You can read the whole list, delete any single item, wipe the history, or delete the child's record entirely. Anything older than 90 days is swept automatically. It is a journal, not a behavioural profile — that distinction is deliberate and it is the line India's child-data rules draw.
Does it need the internet?
Yes, for conversation. It connects over your home Wi-Fi, and you can set quiet hours when it simply will not wake up.
Which languages does it speak?
English, Hindi and natural Hinglish today, mirroring whichever mix your child uses. More Indian languages are planned.
What age is it for?
Ages 3 to 10. Vocabulary, sentence length and topics follow the age band you set, and grow as your child does.
When does it launch, and what will it cost?
There is no launch date, because there is no factory. Each one is 3D-printed, wired and bench-tested by hand in Pune, about one a day. So it goes out in small batches: Batch 1 is 20 units for founding families, and later batches are dated only once the one before it has shipped. We are targeting under ₹5,000 for the device with a small monthly plan, and founding families get founder pricing. These are targets while we are still building, not final prices.
Is this a finished product I can buy today?
No, and we would rather say so. Batch 1 is a pilot run with founding families, not a shop. You get a working device, our phone number, and a direct line into what gets built next; in exchange you are living with an early build and telling us what breaks. If you want a boxed, finished, sitting-on-a-shelf product, wait for a later batch — we will still be here.
How we make it
One a day. By hand. In Pune.
We would rather be honest about the thing most companies hide until your money has cleared: there is no factory. There is a 3D printer that takes most of a day to print one shell, and then someone wires it, flashes it, talks to it to make sure it talks back, and packs it.
Batch 1 is 20 units
Not a marketing number — it is what can be built and properly supported at once. Every one is hand-delivered or couriered with a real phone number attached.
We set up the first one with you
In Pune we come over. Elsewhere we stay on a call while you do it. Ten minutes, and we would rather watch it go wrong in front of us than read about it in an email.
Batch 2 is dated when Batch 1 ships
We are not going to take a hundred orders and then discover what it takes to build a hundred. If you are further down the queue we will tell you that, honestly, rather than guess a date to keep you warm.
Joining the waitlist costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Founding families are invited from the waitlist, in order, as each batch opens.
Early families
Meet it first.
We are building this in Pune, with a seven-year-old as the first tester. The waitlist is the queue: founding families are invited from it, in order, as each batch opens. Join it and you will hear before anyone else — and help decide what it should be able to do.