I am Aishwarya, the Co-Founder of Glovatrix. We have developed a wearable device named ‘Fifth Sense’ that helps deaf people communicate effectively without being dependant on a sign language interpreter. Millions of deaf people rely on sign language to communicate, however most people don’t understand sign language as it can be tricky to interpret. This creates a huge communication gap between the deaf and rest of the world.

Through ‘Fifth sense, we aim to bridge this communication gap by translating sign language gestures to speech and text and make sign language comprehensible to all. Imagine a speech-disabled patient having private conversations with his doctor without a translator in the room or a deaf person confidently giving a presentation to room full of people or a parent hearing the words ‘I love you’ from their deaf child for the first time.

We aim to empower the deaf and speech impaired people and enable them to live a independant and dignified lives. Fifth sense has been my brainchild since 2009, when I met a deaf child named Atharva who inspired me to learn sign language. I observed that while the rest of the kids had friends, Atharva was lonely and often kept to himself since other kids did not understand him. I started learning sign language to interact with him. When he realized that I could not only understand his language but also respond in sign language, he was ecstatic with tears of joy. Since then I had a burning desire to help the deaf communicate.

I pursued Electronic engineering from Manipal university and chose to work on a gesture control robot as my final year project. Combining my sign language skills and knowledge in electronics and idea was born – The Fifth sense translation gloves. The idea was converted to reality when Parikshit, a data scientist with extensive experience in predictive analysis, joined forces with me to form Glovatrix. Our vision is to facilitate seamless communication between people of all abilities and give every deaf and speech impaired person the ability to express and be heard in their natural language – sign language.