Shunya Labs has launched Zero Codeswitch, a new speech recognition foundation model designed to understand how people in India actually speak. Built to handle natural code-mixed and multilingual conversations, the model can recognise real-life blends of Hindi, English, and several regional languages without using translation layers.
According to the Gurugram-based voice AI startup, Zero Codeswitch has recorded a 3.10% Word Error Rate on the OpenASR leaderboard. This marks a 48% improvement over the next-best competing system and sets a new benchmark for speech recognition in India.
Unlike global speech models that are usually adapted from English-first datasets, Zero Codeswitch has been trained from the ground up on millions of hours of Indian speech. This training approach helps the model capture local accents, dialects, pronunciation changes, and everyday expressions used across the country. By focusing on how languages are mixed in real conversations, the model aims to deliver higher accuracy in practical, real-world use cases where speakers often switch languages within the same sentence.
Shunya Labs said the model has been optimised for enterprise-grade, real-time use. Zero Codeswitch runs efficiently on standard CPUs and delivers sub-100 millisecond latency. It also reduces deployment costs by up to 20 times compared to more resource-heavy alternatives. This makes it suitable for large-scale applications such as customer support platforms, voice assistants, automated call centres, and other speech-driven enterprise systems.
The company has positioned Zero Codeswitch for organisations that need strong performance along with strict data security and compliance. The model supports on-premises and air-gapped deployments, making it suitable for enterprise and public-sector environments where sensitive data must remain within controlled systems. Shunya Labs said the solution complies with key global standards, including HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO 27001.
Highlighting the company’s long-term vision, Ritu Mehrotra, CEO and co-founder of Shunya Labs, said, “Shunya Labs was built with a focus on deep research rather than short-term marketing narratives.” CTO and co-founder Sourav Bandyopadhyay added, “Shunya’ represents our philosophy of starting from first principles.”
With Zero Codeswitch, Shunya Labs is targeting the gap between advanced AI research and practical enterprise deployment, addressing the unique challenges of India’s multilingual and code-switched speech landscape.
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