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Essay · 6 min read · 9 Oct 2026

Say it in your language.

People do not think in one language. An assistant built for India has to keep up with how people actually speak.

Listen to how a family in Bengaluru plans a weekend. Amma speaks Kannada, the kids answer in English, someone forwards a Hindi voice note about the train timings, and the booking itself happens on an English website. Nobody notices the switching. It is just how people talk.

Most software notices. It asks you to pick a language in settings and then expects you to stay there. That is backwards. The assistant should adapt to the person, not the other way round.

Mixed language is the normal case

"Nale bele 9 ge car service book maadi" is a perfectly clear request. So is "kal subah ka reminder laga do, bill pay karna hai". We treat mixed language as the default, not an edge case. Gogo understands the request, carries out the task in whatever language the website or service needs, and replies in the language you used.

Voice matters more than typing

For many people, especially parents and grandparents, typing a careful message is effort. Speaking is not. A voice note in Tamil about refilling a prescription should work exactly as well as a typed English sentence. When Gogo replies, it keeps the details precise: the amount, the date, the name of the pharmacy, written out so they can be checked.

The logo cycles through scripts for a reason. Gogo is the same assistant in every one of them.

Local means more than translation

Speaking your language is only half of it. Being useful in India means knowing that rupees are written as ₹2,340, that a PNR matters, that BESCOM sends the electricity bill, that UPI is how most people pay and that the cab is probably not booked through an international app. The same thinking applies as we open in other countries: local currency, local services, local ways of saying things.

What we are still learning

Language is never finished. Regional words, names of places and the way people abbreviate them keep surprising us. When Gogo is unsure what you meant, it asks a short question rather than guessing, and it remembers the answer so it does not have to ask again.

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