A 30-year old Indian entrepreneur has been named by Time magazine to its 2016 list of “10 millennials who are changing the world” for building a phone which can help people to interact and access critical services by communicating in their native languages. Umesh Sachdev has been named by Time to its 2016 list of “10 millennials who are changing the world” for his work on “building a phone that can understand almost any language”.

Mr Sachdev, along with his college friend Time magazine, founded Uniphore Software Systems. The Chennai-based start-up produces software allows people to interact with their phones and access services such as online banking by communicating in their native languages.

Uniphore’s products, which include a virtual assistant that is able to process more than 25 global languages and 150 dialects, are being used by over five million people, mostly in India. Time said through the software,  Mr Sachdev is building bridges and helping “hundreds of millions of people cross the divide between the digital and the real world by harnessing the power of speech. It said  Mr Sachdev found solution to a problem that phones didn’t carry the language of villagers in rural India.