Raithu Nestham

AI app for Telugu farmers

Comment

Inspiration

In my village, farmers struggle to get farming advice in Telugu. Most farming apps and Alexa skills are in English, which they cannot read or use. I wanted to build a friend for them who speaks their own language. That's why I created "Raithu Nestham".

What it does

Raithu Nestham is an Alexa skill for Telugu farmers.

  • Provides weather updates, crop prices, and farming tips in Telugu
  • Completely voice-based, no need to read or type
  • Works like a 24/7 friend for small and marginal farmers

How we built it

  • Alexa Skills Kit + AWS Lambda (Python) for the core skill
  • Amazon Bedrock for understanding Telugu intents
  • Alexa in Telugu voice model with custom slot types for crops and villages

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was Telugu voice recognition. The same word has many accents in Telangana. Handling Telugu Unicode text inside AWS Lambda and making Alexa respond naturally in Telugu was difficult.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I tested it with farmers from my village. When a farmer asked in Telugu "Repu varsham padutunda (Will it rain tomorrow?), Alexa replied in fluent Telugu! That moment was priceless.

What we learned

We learned how to build voice technology for low-literacy users and how to make AI truly local by using native language.

What's next for Raithu Nestham

Next, we want to add live Mandi market prices, Government scheme information (Rythu Bandhu, PM Kisan), and connect it to local agriculture officers.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history