Kush Jain ’22 has been named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for work by his company, ORama AI, which has developed a high-tech glove to help people learn to read Braille.
Since its founding in early 2022, the company has raised more than a half million dollars in funding. The glove uses light and sensor technology to “read” the dots beneath a person’s fingers and speak the words out loud.
“More than 90 percent of visually impaired people can’t read Braille because it requires a tutor to learn,” Jain said, adding that tutors are in short supply and expensive. “Meanwhile, there’s a lot of employment data that shows that braille literacy is the single most determining factor of whether a visually impaired person is employed.”
Jain, who is from India, was inspired to create the device after volunteering at a school for the blind in Bangalore in 2018. He created a prototype for the device as a student at Cornell and a member of the eLab student business accelerator. He also received support from faculty and staff as a student in the Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity in the College of Arts & Sciences.
“What we’re doing fits so perfect with the Milstein Program because it’s at the intersection of humanities and technology,” he said, adding that the program paid for the parts for his initial prototype and he’s since received guidance from the Milstein Foundation. “We’re building a product for people who are otherwise neglected by technology and being in the Milstein environment made me feel like what I was doing was the right thing to be working on.”
Jain also received a Consumer Electronics Show (CES) innovation award in 2023, and was able to introduce the product during that year’s show.
The company has a working prototype and is intending to start production on several hundred gloves it plans to beta test this year to see if people are able to independently set up the glove and use it, one of the company’s goals. They hope to start large-scale production by 2025, Jain said.
“We have many pre-orders already even though we haven’t done any active marketing,” he said. “Right after we presented at CES, we got a request from a customer that included a photo of their 4-year-old daughter who is visually impaired cheering. ‘We’re cheering you on,’ the caption said. That really touched my heart.”
Jain also founded another tech solutions company, Lumio Partners.
“A lot of people think when they’re working on a startup that they have to focus on only that one company, and I think that mentally discourages people from working on impact-based ideas,” Jain said. “I’m working on ORama because I’m excited about the impact it can create, but I’m also spending a lot of time on Lumio Partners. You can do both.”
