Kerala startup’s AI tool gets a thumbs up from GitHub

Meetings are a part of everyone’s working life. And the higher people climb the corporate ladder, the more hours they spend in conference rooms or video calls. The real problem, however, isn’t just the time spent talking. It’s what happens afterwards. Important decisions are forgotten, action points disappear and someone inevitably has to sift through lengthy recordings to find a single comment.

That has fuelled demand for AI-powered transcription tools that can automatically capture conversations, generate summaries and highlight follow-up tasks. Over the past two years, dozens of such platforms have appeared, promising to save workers hours every week.

One of the latest entrants is Meetily, developed by Trivandrum-based Zackriya Solutions. Since launching its prototype in December 2024, the open-source meeting transcription platform has rapidly attracted users worldwide. In the first week of July this year, Meetily rose to the top of GitHub’s trending charts, crossed over 300,000 downloads and picked up more than 10,000 stars – GitHub’s equivalent of a ‘subscribe’ – in just a week taking the total tally to over 24,000.

Its rise comes at an interesting time. Social media has made sharing almost second nature. Millions of people post holiday pictures, restaurant meals and snippets of their daily lives online every day. Businesses, however, play by a different set of rules. Meetings often involve customer information, product roadmaps, legal advice and strategic discussions that simply cannot be treated so casually.

That’s where Zackriya Solutions believes Meetily stands apart.

Privacy Matters: Most AI transcription tools rely on the cloud. Meeting recordings, transcripts and summaries are uploaded and processed on someone else’s servers. Even when vendors promise strong security, many companies remain uncomfortable with sensitive conversations leaving their own systems.

It’s an understandable concern. The average global data breach is estimated to cost more than 4 million US dollars. Whether every incident reaches that figure or not, a single breach can expose confidential customer information, internal strategy, legal discussions and product plans.

“Our clients were uncomfortable with sensitive conversations being uploaded to third-party servers. We built Meetily for ourselves first, then realised others needed it too. The idea is simple, we bring AI to you, not your data to us,” says Zackriya CEO Sandeep Zachariah.

Meetily was built around a simple philosophy: privacy first. According to the founders, privacy was never an afterthought or a marketing slogan. It was the reason the product existed in the first place.

Community First: Another feature helping Meetily stand out is that it is open source. The software itself is open core –meaning anyone can clone, use, build on top of or inspect the code.

The code is released under the MIT licence, giving developers the flexibility to modify it or build their own versions.core product features.

The company’s approach appears to be striking a chord. Sandeep says it feels genuinely good to see Meetily embraced by the open-source community on GitHub. Downloads are only one measure of success, he says. What matters even more is the constant stream of feedback from developers who test the software, report issues and push it in real-world situations.

That feedback has helped shape the product. In a market crowded with AI tools making ambitious promises, Meetily is quietly building a reputation around something much simpler – giving users useful meeting notes without asking them to surrender control of their data.

Live and Local: The software itself is straightforward to use. Meetily converts speech into text in real time, allowing users to watch the transcript appear while a meeting is still in progress. Instead of splitting attention between listening and taking notes, participants can stay focused on the conversation.

The company is also realistic about where the platform stands today. While it supports multiple languages, the team says it has not yet been fully optimised for Indic languages. Nor is Meetily being positioned purely as an Indian product. Zackriya says it is building for a global audience and has been encouraged by the response from users across different countries.

Meetily is available in two versions: a free Community Edition and a paid Pro version. The Pro version offers higher transcription accuracy and additional features, and the company says many users who first discovered the software through GitHub later upgraded after trying the free edition.

Under the hood, Meetily uses AI models including Whisper and Parakeet to deliver fast transcription. The platform allows users to customise workflows, summaries and outputs instead of forcing everyone into the same way of working.

Added Advantages: One feature likely to appeal to many organisations is that it allows them freedom of choice when it comes to pluggable AI models and are not locked into one. By default, Meetily is designed to run on device locally.

The platform is also not limited to live meetings. Existing audio recordings stored on a computer can also be uploaded and converted into searchable transcripts, making the software useful for interviews, lectures, podcasts and archived conversations.

As Meetily’s popularity has grown, so have questions about its business model. On LinkedIn, many users wanted to know how an open-source platform planned to make money.

Sandeep responded directly, explaining that the Community Edition would remain free and open source, while the paid Pro version would support the company’s operations.

Lean and Mean: Behind Meetily is a relatively small team of around a dozen people brought together by Sandeep. One of his early decisions was to bring in his father, Simon Zachariah, as a partner and senior consultant.

Simon previously served as Senior Director of Research and Development at CDAC and brings decades of experience in embedded systems and wireless product development. Other members of their core team include CTO and cofounder Sujith S, Athul Chandroth, Safvan Mohammed, Supin PS and Mary Mathew.

In a market where AI companies seem obsessed with adding ever more features, Zackriya has taken the opposite approach.Rather than chasing every new AI capability, the team has focused on solving one problem well while letting users keep control of their own data.

That focus became even sharper after the company brought Startup Village founding chairman Sijo George Kuruvilla on board as an adviser.

“His inputs were invaluable as we started getting a clear picture of how users see the product, what they expect and how we should be focusing on these core areas instead of looking to add more frills. That was a tremendous help,” says Sujith S, who has been shepherding the Meetily backend team.

Hackathons and conversations during Kerala Product Hunt events also helped shape both the product and the team’s thinking, he says.

Safety First: Meetily’s story may ultimately be about more than meeting transcription. As AI quietly becomes another office productivity tool, trust could become just as important as speed or accuracy.

Zackriya is betting that companies will increasingly want AI that works for them without sending their conversations elsewhere. If Meetily’s rapid rise on GitHub is any indication, that is a bet many users are willing to make.

Space and AI boost Kerala

Kerala’s tech startup community saw a major milestone as Hex20 announced the successful launch of its second satellite, Koyo, aboard a SpaceX rocket last Tuesday. Koyo (Kinetic Optical U-Yah Observer) is a 3U CubeSat jointly developed by Hex20, AG West Company and National Central University, Taiwan. The satellite transmitted a signal to a US ground station within two hours, and a Trivandrum ground station received its beacon the same night, with all reported health parameters in excellent condition. The company expects commissioning to begin within a day or two after standard checks and verification. The project was built through collaboration among science and engineering faculty and students at Kanazawa University and is described as the first microsatellite in the 50 kg class designed to observe X-rays and gamma rays.

SuperBryn, founded in February 2025 by Neetu Mariam Joseph and Nikhitha Shankar, was selected for the 2026 Google for Startups Accelerator cohort as one of 20 startups chosen from nearly 2,500 applicants. It is the only voice AI-focused company in the cohort, signalling growing recognition of production reliability as a distinct category. The founders will work with Google and industry experts through workshops and deep dives on product design, customer acquisition and leadership. The company has pivoted from building agentic chatbots to developing infrastructure that makes AI agents reliable in production.

Kerala taps Somnath for space

After S Somnath stepped down as ISRO chairman, questions arose about why Kerala had not leveraged his experience to advance the state’s ambitions for a space technology–driven economy. Kerala Chief Minister VD Satheesan has now invited Somnath to serve as a government adviser to help boost the space economy, while also supporting tech-related education and job creation. Somnath accepted the offer during the N Ramachandran Memorial Lecture in Trivandrum, where he was honoured for his achievements. His expertise is expected to strengthen Kerala’s efforts to build a space-tech ecosystem.

River picks site for expansion

A Bengaluru-based EV startup, River Mobility, founded by Aravind Mani and Vipin George, has finalised a land parcel to set up its manufacturing plant in Whitefield, Karnataka, according to Indian Startup News. River has been scouting for a land parcel since July 2024 to set up its second and largest manufacturing plant, which aims to increase its production capacity to 5 lakh units a year from the current 1 lakh units. The company had earlier said it would need around 25 to 50 acres of land and was actively evaluating options in Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Founded in 2021, the startup designs and manufactures multi-utility electric two-wheelers.

Love in Time of Semiconductors

The AI-driven semiconductor boom is expected to push South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix to record operating earnings, potentially exceeding a combined 100 trillion won. That level of profit could generate about 65 billion US dollars in corporate taxes – roughly what Seoul had projected for its entire 2026 corporate tax revenue. It appears the windfall is also boosting prospects in another market: romance. Seoul-based matchmaking company Sunoo says demand has surged from clients hoping to meet employees at the two chipmakers. Some who once turned down introductions are now asking for second chances after hearing about generous pay packages and bonuses that could reach hundreds of thousands of US dollars in the coming months. Apparently, love isn’t blind – it can read a payslip.