Built by Innovators on the Autism Spectrum, 5-Minute AI Tool Is Helping 1000s of Children

A child’s voice sample plays on a screen. Lines of code scroll beneath it. Four autistic innovators lean closer, adjusting the tiniest details.

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They are building something they once needed themselves: a faster way for children to be understood early, and supported sooner.

This is where ‘Neurolens by Gabify’ began.

Gabify, headquartered in New Delhi, India, is an AI-enabled screening platform designed to make early detection of autism and speech-language disorders more accessible, affordable, and inclusive for families across India and beyond. Screenings typically start at Rs 499, with subsidised and partnership-based access for schools, NGOs, anganwadis (village childcare centres), and underserved communities. It was built for autistic children, and built by autistic innovators at the centre.

Vasyl Leshchuk, Seymour Verdi, Kanak Kadulkar, and Aniket Gupta brought their intuitive understanding of neurodiversity into the product, shaping a solution that now supports thousands of children in getting help earlier.

At the heart of this story is Sahil Chopra (31), founder of Neurolens by Gabify.

“I never imagined something like Gabify could ever exist, something that could truly help children with speech and neurological conditions. But the journey kept moving, and here we are,” Sahil tells The Better India.

Today, Gabify has supported over 2,500 children and, in the process, has opened doors to inclusive employment, reflecting a belief the team holds closely: neurodiversity can drive innovation.

Inclusion at Gabify is not symbolic, it is structural. Beyond autistic innovators being part of the core product thinking, the organisation actively creates inclusive work pathways through flexible work structures designed for neurodivergent team members, role-based training rather than degree-based hiring, and collaboration with clinicians, special educators, and caregivers as extended contributors.

“We are building an ecosystem where lived experience, empathy, and skill are valued as much as formal credentials. As Gabify scales, inclusive hiring will remain a non-negotiable design principle, not a side initiative,” adds Sahil.

A personal loss that sparked a national mission

The idea of Gabify took shape in 2023, and product development began in 2024. Yet the story began much earlier for Sahil.

Ten days before his board exams, he lost a dear friend to suicide. It happened after relentless bullying for his speech and neurological differences.

For a teenager already carrying exam pressure, the loss landed like a shock that never fully lifted. Sahil kept showing up for school, for papers, for the life expected of him, while the memory stayed close. He carried questions he could not answer then: what help might have changed things, and why it arrived too late.

The grief stayed with him for years, present in the background, shaping what he noticed and what he could not ignore.

Life moved forward, as it often does, even when loss has not found a place to rest. Sahil went on to build a career in the legal field and later in investment banking. A turning point came when he met Prachi, his wife and now co-founder of Gabify.

“Prachi worked closely with children with autism and ADHD. While we were getting to know each other before marriage, I would often meet these kids in hospitals. Those moments brought me closer to the need for a solution,” shares Sahil.

Prachi brings over ten years of experience as a senior speech therapist across Max Hospital, Fortis, Mom’s Belief, and Manthan School. Over the years, she supported children struggling to express themselves across autism, Parkinson’s, Einstein syndrome, apraxia, and more.

What stayed with her most was a painful pattern she saw too often: children arriving far too late for early intervention. Delayed detection, costly assessments, and long waiting lists meant precious time was lost.

In 2023, Sahil chose to invest his entire savings into building a tool that could identify speech and neurological conditions in five minutes.

For many parents, those five minutes replace months of waiting, repeated hospital visits, and assessments stretched across several sessions.

The co-founders travelled across tier 2 and tier 3 cities, speaking with medical professionals, parents, and therapists to understand the gaps they were encountering first-hand.

Families reach Neurolens through multiple real-world touchpoints, via referrals from therapists, clinicians, and paediatricians, and partnerships with schools, therapy centres, and NGOs. They also discover it through parent communities, social media, word of mouth, and pilot collaborations at the grassroots level.

This multi-channel access means families do not have to search for answers alone. Neurolens meets them where they already are.

As Gabify expands into Tier 2 and Tier 3 regions, it works with organisations in the disability inclusion ecosystem to widen access. The team collaborates with the Society for Accessible Change and Care (SACC) India to strengthen its regional presence, and with the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPED) to connect with government bodies working on inclusive deployment. Gabify also draws guidance from professionals across disability policy and public healthcare.

Building the team behind the tool

As the vision sharpened, the technology needed a strong spine.

During an international visit, Sahil met Vasyl Leshchuk, who became Gabify’s co-founder and chief technology officer.

“At the age of 13, Vasyl’s child had passed away due to a neurological condition,” Sahil shares. “Whenever we spoke, I could sense how deeply he was connected to this problem. He knew exactly what needed to be built. Our conversations grew from there, and in 2024, Vasyl agreed to join us.”

Why early autism screening can’t wait

As the team travelled across India, including remote villages, Northeastern states, and local anganwadis (village childcare centres), they built diverse data sets. Alongside the need for tools, they observed something else: acceptance of neurological conditions remains a major challenge in Indian society.

“To train our model, we had to capture voices, languages, and behaviour patterns from across the country,” Sahil explains. “A child in North India may behave differently from one in South India, so the model needed to understand those nuances. That’s why gathering data from different regions and dialects was so important.”

The model currently supports English and major Indian language groups. It is designed to be language-agnostic at a behavioural and acoustic level, rather than relying on vocabulary alone. This enables meaningful screening even for children from multilingual or non-English-speaking homes. Additional Indian languages are actively being added as part of the expansion roadmap.

Sahil also stresses the urgency of early pre-screening as autism numbers rise.

“Before COVID, one in 100 children in India had autism. During COVID, it rose to one in 62. And now, post-COVID, it’s one in 30,” he claims.

Finding meaning in small, everyday signs

Gaby informally means ‘talkative’, and the founders chose the name with intention.

Gabify’s platform, Gaby, is an AI-powered virtual therapist designed to screen and support children from as young as eight months. Gabify is the parent company and vision holder, while Neurolens is its flagship AI-powered screening platform. Neurolens represents the practical translation of Gabify’s mission, combining clinical science, ethical AI, and lived experience into a tool that supports early understanding of autism, ADHD, and speech-language challenges.

The AI-powered virtual therapist uses a multi-modal approach, analysing a child’s voice, facial expressions, and eye movements to detect early signs of autism, ADHD, speech delay, apraxia, aphasia, and other neurodevelopmental conditions.

The process begins with a simple self-assessment. Caregivers record their child’s speech and behaviour using a mobile phone, following guided prompts on the platform.

Once the recordings are submitted, Gaby’s AI analyses them. The model is trained on clinical datasets and real-world recordings, and it draws on established diagnostic frameworks such as DSM-5 (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders used by clinicians worldwide) and ADOS (the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule), which inform how assessment parameters are structured and interpreted.

The goal is to evaluate patterns that a trained therapist looks for.

“It evaluates how a child responds to their name, whether they make eye contact, how they react socially, and even subtle patterns in speech, muscle movement, tapping, gaze, and motor behaviour. In fact, we have covered 189 different parameters in the model and trained it accordingly,” shares Sahil.

Based on this analysis, Gaby generates personalised therapy plans tailored to each child’s needs, while tracking milestones such as vocabulary growth, response time, motor skills, and eye contact.

Therapists and clinicians use the insights to guide assessments and therapy planning, and paediatricians to support early referrals with better clinical context. Parents also receive easy-to-understand reports that help reduce confusion and anxiety.

‘We finally had clarity’: What parents noticed first

One parent describes the process as swift and easy.

“We were witnessing some delays in speech and eye contact and were confused about how to go about the process, but it was easy to use the platform at home; we simply had to follow the tasks provided,” they added.

Another parent shares that instead of waiting six months for an appointment, they received clear direction within 48 hours. “Emotionally, we felt lighter. Even after the accurate and detailed analysis, we weren’t worried; we finally had clarity on how to begin the therapy.”

Bhaskar Mishra, who has used Gabify’s assessment parameter tool, explains why accuracy matters. “It’s only after a proper assessment that we truly understand a child’s challenges, the targets we need to set, and the detailed direction about the therapy.”

Gabify is currently used by more than 75 therapists, clinics, and institutions, with adoption steadily growing across private practices, therapy centres, and early-intervention organisations. The platform has completed over 2,500 screenings in just four months.

Sahil acknowledges that some people have concerns about the accuracy of artificial intelligence in tools like Gabify. He clarifies that the aim is to support therapists, streamline parts of the process, and save time.

“We’re able to save nearly 75 to 80 percent of the time usually spent on assessments. What earlier took 45 minutes to an hour over several days can now be done in just five to 10 minutes. And based on our internal research, we are around 90 percent accurate in the assessment,” he adds.

Looking ahead with hope

Gabify’s 15-member team has set a bold goal: to impact at least one million people by 2028 and, over the next decade, deepen understanding of autism and work toward a potential cure. “We want to strengthen the programme to a point where we can identify signs of autism even in the mother’s womb. That, I believe, would be true innovation for the world,” says Sahil.

The people behind Gabify hold a clear belief: autistic minds bring intuition, sharp technological thinking, and a lived understanding of what families need in real time.

And that is the hope Gabify brings.

The real promise of Gabify sits in time.

Time saved for parents who sense something early but do not know where to turn.
Time returned to children whose growth depends on being seen sooner rather than later.
Time reclaimed from waiting rooms, long lists, and unanswered questions.

For families already using it, early support has begun to feel possible. For many more, it may arrive before precious years slip by.

All images courtesy Sahil Chopra

Sources:

‘How Gabify is using AI for speech and neurodevelopmental care’: by Pooja Malik for YourStory, Published on 17 April 2025.