India has always relied on agents. There is the person outside the RTO who knows how to get paperwork done, the passport agent sitting outside the passport office, or a relative who knows exactly whom to call when a file stops moving. Over the years, an entire set of people emerged to help others navigate systems that often feel difficult to use.
People reach out to these agents for many different reasons. Sometimes a form is only available in English when someone is more comfortable reading Hindi. Other times, an app is confusing or unreliable. A process may also assume that everyone already knows which documents to carry or what steps to follow. Some situations depend on experience rather than written instructions, where knowing which office to visit, which counter to stand at, or whom to speak with can make all the difference. As a result, asking someone who already understands the system often feels like the simplest path forward.
Depending on another person also means giving up the true understanding of the subject to know what is happening. You rarely know which step has been completed, whether your application has moved, or why something has been delayed. When a problem appears, there is very little you can do because the process is no longer in your hands. Eventually, as we spoke to more people, we kept hearing the same experience. Nobody was asking for another intermediary, all they simply wanted was a way to get things done without needing someone else to stand between them and the system.
We see language, trust, accessibility, and institutional complexity as different problems that deserve thoughtful solutions. For now, since solving all of them will take time, we chose to begin with something that almost everyone experiences on their phone.
Ru currently helps people find any file on their device using natural language. Everything runs directly on the phone, so no files leave the device. Even if someone has tens of thousands of unorganized files, they can simply ask for what they are looking for, and Ru finds it in seconds.
Ultimately, finding files is only the beginning of what we want to build. We want software that people can speak to naturally in the language they are most comfortable with and trust to help them complete everyday tasks. Human agents became an important part of daily life because they made complicated systems easier to navigate, and our goal is to build technology that offers the same kind of help while allowing people to remain in control of their own experience.