Zeerak Ahmed, a Princeton graduate studying at Harvard’s Master in Design Engineering program, was working on his computer in English one afternoon when two Spanish-speaking classmates asked him a simple question: “Why wasn’t he using Urdu?”
That conversation became the spark. Ahmed realized that for someone like him, a native Urdu speaker from Pakistan, modern technology offered no meaningful way to type in his own language. The archaic keyboard layouts available, phonetic mappings designed for English first, shift keys, and terrible autocorrect systems made Urdu typing feel like a compromise.
In 2017, Ahmed turned this insight into his thesis project for Harvard’s joint Design Engineering program between the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Graduate School of Design. He wasn’t just building an app. He was questioning a fundamental assumption: that all technology must be built for the Latin script first, then awkwardly adapted for everything else.
The resulting efforts culminated in Matnsaz: the keyboard after the Urdu/Persian word which means text-maker or text-builder.
In their own words:
Matnsaz is an initiative to build consumer and developer tools for the Urdu language. These tools are built with the outlook to scale to other languages in the Arabic script. The goal is not just to build software, but to help our audience believe that high quality computing can be experienced in Urdu and built by Urdu speakers. We attempt to build an awareness of culture and history into our technology.
Talking exclusively to TechJuice, Zeerak Ahmed explained:
Matnsaz offers two types of benefits. First, is the interface – this is easier to learn and understand than existing Urdu keyboards. Second – our dataset, Makhzan, is transparent and built with high quality Urdu. We do not know what other keyboards learned from, and so it’s inherently difficult to gauge the quality.
Key Features
- Shape-Based Layout: Reduces standard Urdu key counts down to 21 keys by grouping base shapes and letting the system handle dot placements automatically.
- Soft Space Key: Lets users prevent cursive letter-joining without inserting a full word space, honoring traditional Urdu writing rules.
- Smart Corrections: Automatically swaps out incorrect Unicode characters and handles necessary diacritics (airāb).
Five Years of Research and Design
Between 2017 and 2022, Ahmed conducted extensive research across disciplines. He interviewed dozens of Urdu speakers, collated the development history of language technology, and unraveled the technological layers used to reproduce language in digital software. He collaborated with engineers, designers, Urdu literature scholars, language historians, UX researchers, and computer scientists.
The problem was deeper than just the keyboard layout. Urdu has 39 letters. Many existing keyboards tried to map them phonetically onto QWERTY keyboards, creating confusion because there are more Urdu letters than English letters. The standard Pakistani keyboard layout, while better, still required memorization and awkward finger positions.
The Breakthrough to Matnsaz
Urdu, like all Arabic-script languages, groups letters by their basic shape (rasm). Ahmed realized you could compress the keyboard by grouping letters by shape, reducing 39 keys to just 21. This immediately made keys larger and easier to hit.
When asked how the shape-based keyboard design will adapt across different Arabic-script languages, Ahmed said:
The shape-based system in Matnsaz was designed to scale to all languages in the Arabic script. Other keyboards require separate layouts for every language. The Matnsaz design will allow the same layout for multiple languages.
Beyond the layout, Ahmed built Makhzan, a custom Urdu language dataset. Starting with high-quality published Urdu text from LUMS’ Bunyad Journal and Al-Mawrid’s Ishraq publication, he assembled 6.26 million words of carefully edited Urdu writing. A team of volunteers at LUMS’ Technology for People Initiative transformed this into usable training data.
Makhzan powered an autocorrect system that could fill in missing dots and diacritical marks automatically. This meant users could type only the skeleton of Urdu words and let the keyboard predict and complete them, reducing the button presses needed by nearly half.
The Harvard Moment: 2017-2020
News of Ahmed’s work spread in academic circles. He presented at Princeton, Harvard faculty recognized his work as groundbreaking, and MIT Technology Review Pakistan covered his keyboard project in March 2020. The story made sense: a Pakistani technologist rethinking technology for his own language, not accepting Western paradigms as inevitable.
By 2020, Ahmed’s work had attracted recognition from organizations like the Industrial Designers Society of America. But the app wasn’t ready yet. Ahmed continued refining, testing, iterating.
2022: The iOS Launch
After five years of development, MatnSaz launched on the iOS App Store in November 2022. The timing was symbolic. Ahmed launched under Shanasai LLC, a technology company structure that would anchor his work commercially while maintaining the mission-driven focus.
The iOS launch generated immediate attention. TIME Magazine featured his work in a story titled “The Fight to Preserve the Urdu Script in the Digital World.” Rest of World covered the broader context of bringing non-Latin languages into the digital age. Pakistani media from The Express Tribune to PhoneWorld to Dawn covered the story as a hometown tech success.
Universities began inviting Ahmed to speak. Harvard, Stanford and NYU brought him in. The Lahore Biennale featured his work alongside cultural institutions. LUMS made him a regular speaker at the National Incubation Center.
2026: Bringing It Home & the Android Launch
For the Android version, Ahmed has partnered with Tintash, a Lahore-based software company instead of choosing to outsource to Silicon Valley.
Ahmed explained the reasoning directly: Urdu language technology could not be developed better anywhere else in the world. Pakistan is where the language lives. Pakistan is where the users are. Pakistan is where the knowledge of Urdu typography, script history, and linguistic nuance exists among engineers and designers.
By 2026, Pakistan has 117 million internet users, 45.6% internet penetration, and 194 million cellular mobile connections. Globally, over 260 million people speak Urdu, with the diaspora stretched across the UK, USA, Canada, the Middle East, and beyond, which means the market for Matnsaz is rich.
You can easily check out the keyboard for yourself: Android, iOS
Matnsaz is operated and distributed by Shanasai LLC.
