How a Bengaluru techie's attempt to help with Kannada homework led to a keyboard app for 21 Indian languages

A father trying to help his son complete Kannada homework may not sound like the beginning of a technology story. But for Bengaluru-based developer Krishna Permi, that everyday challenge eventually led to the creation of Akshar, a free keyboard app that runs entirely offline.

The app, available on iPhones and iPads, allows users to type phonetically in English and convert text into Indian scripts. Akshar processes everything directly on the device rather than sending user data to external servers, meaning there is no risk to their data.

The app currently supports typing across 21 Indian languages, including Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and Marathi, as well as Bodo, Dogri, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Manipuri, Sanskrit, and Sindhi. Meanwhile, the keyboard's UI can be accessed in all 11 Indian languages currently supported by Apple.

Why did Permi develop Akshar?

The idea emerged when Permi was helping his son practise Kannada, a language he had grown up reading and writing in northern Karnataka.

"I wanted a simple app for the practice work that I was helping my kid with," Permi said in an interaction with Mint. "One of the things that was bothering me was basically that I didn't have any control over what users are sending to Google."

That concern eventually evolved into a privacy-focused keyboard that works without an internet connection.

“For the app to be used by all age groups, whether they're using it for their first words or they're entering their OTPs or credit card information, I needed a solution which works without an internet connection,” he said.

Why the name Akhshar?

For Permi, the name of the keyboard is closely tied to his lifelong connection with writing.

"I associate myself primarily as a writer," he said, “I wanted to do something around that. When I was trying to build this app, I felt there was no other name that felt so perfect as Akshar.”

The inspiration for his app's name also came from his father, who introduced him to language and writing at a young age. With his keyboard app, Permi also wanted a name that reflected that connection.

The name also carries a deeper meaning, which signalled the resilience behind the idea for Permi.

"Akshar means imperishable, indestructible. So it kind of resonated with me," he said.

Building Akshar

Permi told Mint that he used an open-source AI model developed by AI4Bharat while building Akshar. The model is designed to predict English character combinations and convert them into other Indian languages, such as Kannada, Hindi, or Gujarati.

However, Permi explained that getting the model to run inside an iPhone keyboard was not straightforward.

"The major challenge is the size. The IndicXlit model is actually around 350MB," Perini said. "But for a keyboard to work, only a limited space is allocated, maybe around 75MB."

To overcome that limitation, he worked on compressing the model while preserving accuracy, collaborating with the Apple Developer Centre in Bengaluru.

"I went to the Apple Developer Centre in Bengaluru," he said. “They helped me with the concepts of quantisation, how we can actually compress it. Instead of 32 floating-point values, I used 16. In that way, it has compressed the size without losing the accuracy.”