Just yesterday, my maid came to me, tears in her eyes. Her 6-year-old daughter, who had a persistent cough, had been given an adult dose of antibiotics at a local clinic. She's a small girl for her age, and the dosage felt instinctively wrong to her mother. It was a stark, terrifying reminder of why I started GoDavaii.
The Silent Crisis of Medical Information in India
This isn't an isolated incident. I'm Pururva Agarwal, 27, and I founded GoDavaii in 2025 because I've seen these gaps firsthand. My own grandmother takes four different medications every morning, and for years, nobody in our Hindi and Marathi-speaking household truly understood what they were for, or if they interacted dangerously. We'd simply trust the doctor, and in a rushed 5-minute consultation, crucial details often get missed.
Imagine the scenario: a parent, perhaps not fully literate in English, visiting a busy clinic. The doctor's time is limited. The medical notes are in English, the pharmacist might speak a different dialect, and the fear of asking 'too many' questions is real. These aren't malicious oversights; they're systemic vulnerabilities that put families at risk.
My maid's daughter's situation highlighted a critical need: an intelligent assistant that speaks their language, understands their context, and empowers them to ask sharper questions - or simply to verify information when something feels off.
Building AI That Speaks 22+ Indian Languages
At GoDavaii, we're not aiming to replace doctors. We are building a thinking tool for families, an AI that acts as a second pair of eyes before their next appointment, helping catch what a rushed consultation might have missed. Our core innovation is the AI Health Chat in 22+ Indian languages. This isn't just translation; it's about understanding nuance.
When a mother types "पेट में दर्द और बुखार" (Hindi for stomach ache and fever) or "konjam nalla illa" (Tamil for 'not feeling well'), our AI understands these as symptom descriptions, not just generic phrases. It processes the query, cross-references against known conditions and common remedies, and offers explanations and potential cautions in the user's native language. For instance, it can quickly flag if a certain antibiotic dosage seems unusually high for a 6-year-old of a certain weight, prompting the parent to reconfirm with their doctor.
This deep linguistic capability is a massive technical challenge. It means moving beyond generic large language models and training our AI on vast, diverse datasets reflecting India's linguistic tapestry. It also means meticulously building our Drug Interaction Checker to understand not just allopathic medicines, but also to intelligently cross-verify with AI-verified Desi Ilaaj (Ayurvedic and home remedies), a feature no global competitor offers. We understand that many families rely on traditional practices, and ensuring safety in those combinations is paramount.
Building in Public: Day 6 & Our Journey Ahead
We're on Day 6 of our 30-day public sprint. We started with an ambitious goal: to reach 100,000 families across India and globally. Today, we're at 379 users. That number might seem small to some, but each one represents a family taking charge of their health information, asking better questions, and potentially avoiding an error. My maid's relief, knowing she had a tool to check, was immeasurable.
The engineering effort behind this is substantial. Ensuring accuracy, minimizing hallucinations, and maintaining privacy while delivering a fluid, multi-lingual experience is a constant balancing act. But seeing real families use it - families like mine, and my maid's - makes every late night worth it.
This isn't just about code; it's about dignity and safety. It's about giving every Indian family the same access to clear, understandable health information that's often only available to English speakers or those with unlimited access to top-tier medical advice.
What are your thoughts on using AI to augment, not replace, medical care for diverse populations? Have you or your family encountered situations where language or information gaps led to health worries? I'd genuinely love to hear your experiences in the comments.
Try GoDavaii in your language at godavaii.com.
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