Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast is with Sharath Keshava Narayana, CEO and Co-Founder of Sanas, which provides a real-time speech understanding platform with accent translation, noise cancellation and now real-time speech translation technology.

Sharath and I talk about the challenges with current translation methods, what they are doing with regards to real-time speech translation, the possibilities that this type of technology offers for customer service and experience and the exciting fact that Douglas Adams’ Babelfish application/device that featured in his book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is getting much closer. We also finish off with Sharath’s best advice, his Punk CX brand and his very own good news story.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Twilio’s secret sauce and CarFinance247’s road to success – Interviews from Twilio SIGNAL London 2025 – and is number 566 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here are the highlights of my chat with Sharath:

• Sanas’s breakthrough is real-time, speech-to-speech language translation that bypasses the traditional and slow “speech-to-text-to-translation-to-speech” process. This addresses the high-latency and emotional-nuance deficit in existing solutions.
• Traditional translation latency can be 10-15 seconds, which is unacceptable for real-time service. Sanas currently achieves 1-3 second latency with a goal of getting to “sub-one-second,” aligning CX with a true real-time standard.
• The technology breaks speech into “phonetic sounds,” which are language-agnostic, ensuring the speaker’s natural tonality, emotion, and “voice” are preserved in the translated output—a critical factor for authentic communication and rapport building.
• The B2B version, launching in January, will allow Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to communicate with customers in any of the supported 25 languages with “one click of a button,” eliminating the need to bring in external translators.
• Current data shows that bringing a third-party translator onto a call causes CSAT scores to dip by as much as 50%, with resolution time doubling or tripling. The Sanas solution is positioned to increase First Call Resolution (FCR) and significantly boost customer satisfaction.
• Recognizing data security concerns, the company is launching a B2B cloud version first and is planning to containerize the algorithm for on-premise deployment by April, offering a secure solution for Fortune 200 companies.
• With regards to Sanas’s current app, the app launched with five core languages at 95%+ accuracy: Spanish, French, German, Mandarin, and Italian, with plans to elevate the remaining 20 languages (including Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese) from beta to general availability within the next 12 months.
• The app supports two practical modes for communication: a synchronous video-call-like mode for remote communication and a “solo mode” for side-by-side in-person conversation (I’m sure you could think of travel, retail, healthcare or in-branch financial service use case).
• Testing is underway with 911 services, where current seven-minute wait times for a translator can be life-threatening. The technology is also being explored for applications like point-of-voice systems next to hospital beds.
• The long-term goal is to make communication entirely fluid and language-barrier-free, turning the “Babelfish” of science fiction into a real-world product that unlocks global markets and communication for all 8 billion people.
• Check out Sanas’ app on the Apple store.
• Sharath’s best advice: If you want to improve your customer service, use Sanas. Sanas means clarity. Sanas means authenticity. Sanas means saying no to bias, saying no to discrimination. Sanas means communicating very clearly.
• Sharath’s Punk CX brand: American Express.

About Sharath

Sharath Keshava Narayana is the CEO and co-founder of Sanas, a company changing the way we communicate by building a more understanding world with the first real-time Speech AI platform. With over 20 years of experience in enterprise software sales and a profound understanding of artificial intelligence, Sharath is a serial entrepreneur, investor and visionary of transformative technology. He is a prolific investor through his role at Carya Venture Partners, a fund by and for founders specializing in opportunities in rapidly changing markets. Previously, Sharath co-founded Observe.AI and held pivotal leadership roles in sales and business at burgeoning software companies. He is deeply committed to driving innovations in technology and fostering inclusive communication on a global scale.

Find out more about Sanas, check out their app on the Apple store, say Hi to them on X and Instagram @Sanas_ai and @sanasai.inc respectively and feel free to connect with Sharath on LinkedIn here.

Credit: Thanks to Anna-Maja Oléhn for the photo, licensed as CC BY 2.0.