The currency for any social relationship is its language that helps in communication and interaction. While a modern landscape could predefine culture with boundaries, technology comes as an inclusive infrastructure breaking barriers for any social or economical cause. This piece focuses on Ravneet Punia, an AI engineer turned social entrepreneur and co-founder & CTO of TranslateMe Network. TranslateMe Network is an AI platform that has grown from 5,000 to over 1.3 million users, helping global businesses reach African markets in their own local languages.
Ravneet is a first-generation graduate who comes from a small town that also happens to be the wrestling capital of India. For a time, Ravneet Punia himself trained to participate with a vision to take part in the Olympics. While that goal couldn’t come to fruition, Ravneet Punia picked up the consistency and discipline from his training sessions back in the day to build a career in tech. As India races towards Viksit Bharat 2047, it is quite contrasting to analyze the story of Ravneet, who had to travel 60 km just to get quality education from a good school. His toe-dipping into tech is not a “walk in the park,” as he worked hard for it. And this editorial has its highest form of respect for entrepreneurs who are the true embodiment of rigorous perseverance that are not just fancy words in a CV.
From an expertise standpoint in the niche sector, Ravneet has built AI models at Samsung Research that now power exercise tracking on over 600 million Galaxy Watches worldwide.
Ravneet Punia: “I got interested in the parts of AI that help computers understand images and language and published close to seven research papers in this area while still a student. I was later selected for a global program where Google sponsors students to work on open-source projects—through it, I got to work with researchers from Oxford, Toronto, and Goethe University in Frankfurt. I also started a small freelance business serving clients in the US and UK, just to help fund my own education.”
“At TranslateMe Network, we grew our user base from 5,000 to over 1.3 million by focusing on real incentives: paying everyday people fairly to help train AI in their own language.”
The AI platform is used by 1,000+ businesses, with 9,000+ language experts working across 41+ languages. Under the leadership of Ravneet Punia, TranslateMe Network is not copying what big tech has already done. But they are penetrating unexplored markets and showing data that include “hitting 92% accuracy on their language models.” Their growth is dictated even by a simple affiliate partnership, which was through a popular messaging app and grew user acquisition by 90% while cutting our cost to acquire each user by 40%. Ravneet’s TranslateMe Network is about building the core AI infrastructure for the world’s smaller languages.
Hearing Aid Labs: “TranslateMe Network and we integrated an AI system that analyzed more than 50,000 customer interactions each month, helping us reduce customer support response times from 38 minutes to just 1 minute and improve our NPS by 30%.”
Ravneet says, “Real innovation isn’t building AI for the world’s biggest markets—it’s building bridges for the people technology left behind because of the language they speak, the place they were born, or the ability they were born without.”
