About Alfaaz
A lifetime of unspoken stories,carried to the family waiting to hear them.
Alfaaz is how families separated by distance stay close. It sits with your elders on WhatsApp, in their own language, and brings their stories to you in their own voices, kept forever.
The founders
We wanted this, for our family. Think you do too.
We both grew up in India. We now build Alfaaz from the Netherlands, a long flight and a few time zones from the family who raised us.
We are the children who call on Sundays, fly home once or twice a year, and notice on every visit that the people we love look a little older. We always meant to record their stories properly. We know exactly how that intention slips.
So we built Alfaaz for our own families first. If a conversation wouldn't feel right for our own mother or grandfather, it doesn't ship.
From the diary
Why Alfaaz exists
Two years ago, the day before Kingsday in Amsterdam, I got the call that my grandfather had passed suddenly.
When I flew back to India, I found his handwritten diary among his things. I fought my siblings to keep it. But when I sat down with it, I couldn't read most of his handwriting. Between the lines were names I was never told, places I was never taken, a whole life I could no longer ask him about.
The archive I wanted was right there in my hands. But it was already closed.
I didn't want the same thing to happen with my grandmother. So I hired a ghostwriter. It didn't work. Elders don't open up by dictating their life to a stranger, and memories don't arrive on a schedule. They surface sideways, on an ordinary afternoon, pulled loose by the right question in their own language. I had paid for a writer. What I needed was someone to sit with them, ask, and listen.
If you're reading this, you probably have your own version: a parent or grandparent whose stories you have meant to ask about for years. Alfaaz is built for them, and for you, so that what you're left holding is not a diary you can't read, but a voice you can always return to.
Our commitments
Four promises we keep.
We check every product decision against them, most of all when the easier path is ours.
The elder comes first.
When a choice is easier for us and harder for them, we pick theirs.
Your stories never train AI.
We never use your family's recordings, voices or stories to train AI models. They stay with your family.
Honest over polished.
We tell you plainly where Alfaaz is still rough. Vague reassurance is not trust.
The archive outlasts us.
We are building full export, so your family never needs Alfaaz to reach what your elders shared.
The first families to trust us with these promises are on the Founding Families page.
The name
Why is it called Alfaaz?
Alfaaz is the Urdu and Hindi word for words. That is what the service is made of: an elder's spoken words, carried to family far away and kept in their own voice. It is also why the voice that talks with your elder introduces itself as Alfaaz. The site is alfaaz.me, which in Hinglish also reads as alfaaz mein, in words. If a search for the name shows you a singer or a song instead, type alfaaz.me.