Sarvam Epoch 2026: Saras V4, Bulbul-V4, Kaze smart glasses showcased
What's the story
Indian AI start-up Sarvam held its inaugural Epoch conference in Bengaluru today. At the event, the firm introduced Saras V4 (an AI model for speech recognition) and Bulbul V4, a text-to-speech tool. Kaze smart glasses for the visually impaired and a service that lets developers rent Indian phone numbers were also showcased. So, how do they work? Let us find out.
Tech upgrades
Improved speech recognition and text-to-speech models
Sarvam Saras's new version, Saras V4, is now better at recognizing Indic languages.
It can transcribe those like Hindi, Bengali, Odia, Sanskrit, and Manipuri.
The company has also improved its text-to-speech model Bulbul.
This updated model lets you add emotions like laughter or emphasize certain words for a more natural audio output.
New offerings
Smart glasses for a visually impaired person
Sarvam showcased its Kaze smart glasses at the Epoch conference.
A demo video showed a visually impaired person using them to get information about bus routes and stops.
Using its onboard cameras, the glasses identified an approaching bus, offered data about its route, calculated the remaining travel time, and finally alerted the user when their stop was nearby.
Service
Number rental service
A notably unusual announcement at the event was a service which permits users to rent Indian mobile numbers.
In a live demo, the firm showed a user renting a phone number in roughly 30 seconds after finishing the PAN and Aadhaar verification.
The service is meant for developers building AI agents that require Indian numbers for voice calling as well as other communication-based applications.