The Entrepreneurial Journey of UniFor's Co-Founder: Bridging the Digital Divide with Voice Recognition Technology

The company, Uni for It, has successfully raised Series A funding from Nag and Toine, among others. The technology focuses on voice recognition and analytics, enabling users to interact with technology in their vernacular languages, addressing a significant gap in the market for English-speaking interfaces.

The speaker shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey spanning approximately 9 to 10 years, with his current company being 8 years old. He reflects on the accidental successes that have contributed to the company's growth and impact, emphasizing the importance of introspection in entrepreneurship.

The speaker's entrepreneurial journey began during his engineering studies in Delhi, where he met his co-founder and wife. Coming from a family with a strong academic background but few entrepreneurs, he initially felt inclined to follow a corporate path, unlike his co-founder from a Marwari business family who recognized the speaker's entrepreneurial potential early on.

While in engineering, the speaker and his co-founder developed their first entrepreneurial idea after losing a mobile phone. They conceptualized a device to trace lost phones, which led to the creation of a prototype. Their innovation caught the attention of Galto, a major SIM card company in France, which sponsored their development and invited them to Paris.

The duo participated in various technology competitions, including a business plan competition sponsored by Intel. They emerged as one of the top two teams in India, earning a trip to UC Berkeley, where they ranked among the top 10 teams globally. This exposure attracted interest from venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, who recognized the potential of their mobile market solution in India.

The speaker discusses the founding of their first company, Singularis Technologies, highlighting the validation of both technology and business plans that led to this venture. They emphasize the unique focus on deep tech, which is not commonly pursued in India, and the challenges faced in creating intellectual property and patents, a practice more typical of Silicon Valley.

Despite initial interest from two telecom providers in India, the speaker reflects on the struggles to scale the product beyond these clients over a period of two and a half years. They describe the operations as small and break-even, leading them to question why their solution, aimed at improving mobile tracking, was not gaining traction.

In their quest for answers, the entrepreneurs met with various stakeholders, including Professor Ashok Junjunwala from IIT Madras, who is recognized as an influential figure in the telecom sector. The professor critically assessed their business plan, providing insights that initially felt harsh but ultimately proved valuable, revealing that their product was ahead of its time and that they lacked experience in entrepreneurship.

Acknowledging the professor's feedback, the entrepreneurs expressed their determination to continue their journey rather than return to traditional jobs. This led to an introduction to the incubation program at IIT Madras, which focuses on technology startups. They relocated to Chennai, marking a significant cultural shift, and prepared to start anew with a focus on leveraging mobile technology, which had a broader reach than the internet in India during 2007-2008.

The speaker highlights a significant digital divide in India, noting that while mobile phone penetration is nearing one billion users, internet access remains limited to 150-200 million people. They emphasize that 700 million individuals, representing 70% of the population, reside in tier 2 cities or villages, often disconnected from the digital revolution due to factors such as language barriers, education levels, and the prevalence of feature phones over smartphones.

Recognizing the ubiquity of mobile devices in rural areas, the speaker proposes leveraging this technology to connect underserved populations to essential services like banking, education, and healthcare. They mention emerging concepts such as telemedicine and e-education as potential avenues for innovation, expressing a desire to avoid being just another mobile value-added service provider and instead focus on rural opportunities for first-mover advantage.

Before launching any initiatives, the team undertakes field research in Tamil Nadu villages, spending a week observing mobile phone usage. They discover that over 99% of villagers primarily use their phones for voice calls in vernacular languages, often relying on missed calls to communicate. SMS usage is minimal, as most messages are in English, which many cannot read. The team notes that while some young villagers are aware of social media platforms like Arut, they primarily access the internet through distant internet cafes.

The speaker reflects on the potential to connect mobile banking, education, health, and agriculture through voice communication, given that mobile devices serve primarily as communication tools. They draw inspiration from successful models like Just Dial, which operates a premium number service that connects users to businesses. The speaker envisions creating a similar service tailored for rural villages, aiming to establish a small contact center in Madras to facilitate this connection.

In an initiative to assist local villages in Tamil Nadu, a low-cost marketing campaign was launched, encouraging residents to call a designated number for any life problems without incurring charges, except for telecom fees. The goal was to utilize Google and the internet to provide answers to the queries received. Within three months, the service received over 10,000 calls, leading to an overwhelming response that necessitated a pause for analysis.

Analysis of the calls revealed that over 95% were answered by a Tamil-speaking operator who would understand the queries, search for answers in English via Google, and then respond in Tamil. This indicated that the local population had trivial information needs that could be addressed through internet access, but they lacked the means to connect to it. The primary categories of inquiries included livelihood opportunities, government schemes, and agriculture-related information.

The team recognized the challenge of sustaining free calls for a larger population, considering India's 700 million people and 26 major languages. To make the service scalable and viable, they proposed replacing human operators with computers capable of handling calls. This shift would involve developing speech-to-text and text-to-speech technologies tailored to Indian vernaculars, addressing the complexities of dialect variations across regions.

Based in Chennai, a prominent technology hub, the team aimed to create advanced algorithms for speech recognition and synthesis in multiple Indian languages. They acknowledged that dialects could vary significantly even within the same language, complicating recognition tasks. The project also needed to account for the challenging environments from which rural customers would call, such as fields and public transport, which posed issues like ambient noise and microphone quality.

After approximately a year of hard work and collaboration with the computer science department at IIT Madras, the team successfully developed their first few algorithms and filed a patent. In 2007, they incorporated a company, confident in their technology's potential to create a platform for various vertical applications in banking, education, and health, each serving as a revenue source.

The founders decided early on that their technology's application was best suited for a B2B model rather than direct consumer sales. They recognized the vast potential of their technology across multiple industries, aiming to benefit consumers indirectly through partnerships with various businesses.

Over the years, the company expanded its reach beyond Indian languages, developing speech software capable of handling dialects. They secured seven patents for their unique algorithms, which attracted clients like American Express, who sought solutions for understanding diverse English accents in their call centers.

The company evolved into the world's largest SaaS-based speech software provider for the enterprise segment. Their flagship product focuses on speech analytics, leveraging the vast amounts of data generated from consumer interactions with enterprises, which are crucial touchpoints in the business ecosystem.

The speaker emphasized the importance of human interaction in business, noting that despite the prevalence of mobile apps and online services, consumers often prefer to speak directly to a representative when facing issues, such as losing a credit or debit card. This highlights the critical role of voice communication in customer service.

The discussion highlights the significant role of call centers in customer service, particularly for demographics such as senior citizens and rural populations in regions like India and Asia, who are less likely to adopt mobile apps. On a single day, global call centers record and store an astounding 56 million hours of consumer-to-business conversations, representing a vast amount of big data that remains largely unanalyzed. The speaker emphasizes the potential of utilizing speech-to-text technology to analyze these calls, which could help businesses better understand their consumers, improve service, and increase revenue.

The flagship product of the company, which leverages speech-to-text technology, accounts for approximately 60% of its revenue. Major clients include American Express, various banks, and numerous business process outsourcing (BPO) firms. The second product, which has evolved from initial rural applications, focuses on virtual assistants tailored for enterprise use cases in sectors such as banking, healthcare, and education. This product serves a diverse user base, with 85% of users being from rural areas, totaling around 4.5 million out of 5.5 million users on the platform.

The speaker elaborates on the nature of speech science, noting that the effectiveness of speech recognition improves with more data. The platform benefits from daily interactions with 5.5 million users across various languages and dialects, which enhances the machine learning capabilities of their speech software. Although revenue from rural users in countries like Myanmar, Cambodia, and parts of India is lower, the data collected from these interactions significantly contributes to refining the robustness of their speech engine.

The final product discussed is in the realm of speech biometrics, which was developed to facilitate secure financial transactions via voice authentication. Recognizing the challenges posed by traditional username and password systems for certain populations, the company created a voice-based authentication process. This innovative approach has led to the development of one of the most accurate speech biometric software solutions globally, with 30 million users conducting financial transactions through institutions like HSBC, B Bank, and Citibank.

The company has evolved its product portfolio significantly, moving from traditional licensing and services to a fully Software as a Service (SaaS) model. This transition reflects the broader evolution of enterprise software, with the company now offering voice biometrics and other products. They have raised three rounds of venture financing and are in the process of a fourth, with a presence in five countries and over 70 enterprise customers, serving more than 5 million end users.

The speaker reflects on their entrepreneurial journey, which began with an attempt to locate lost mobile phones. Although that venture did not scale, they transitioned to vernacular speech-based products, which have seen significant growth. The speaker emphasizes the importance of rural use cases in strengthening their product, despite the majority of revenue coming from non-rural applications.

In introspecting the factors that led to the success of their current venture compared to a previous one, the speaker challenges the notion that successful entrepreneurs are always daring. They argue that many successful entrepreneurs, including Jeff Bezos and Travis Kalanick, were not from the industries they disrupted and were often unaware of the challenges involved. Bezos, for instance, launched Amazon with a vast selection of books, far exceeding that of established bookstores, while Kalanick revolutionized transportation without prior experience in the field.

The speaker highlights the innovative business model of Airbnb, which started as a way for its founders to pay rent by subletting air mattresses in their home. This example illustrates how necessity can drive creativity and lead to the establishment of a billion-dollar company. Similarly, in the realm of speech recognition, the speaker notes that despite the dominance of major players like Apple and Google, their company, Unifor, entered the market as first-time entrepreneurs with no prior funding, aiming to provide multilingual speech recognition solutions.

The speaker posits that their ignorance about the challenges of the speech recognition industry actually worked to their advantage. They were able to pivot quickly to a SaaS model, which is more sustainable and sticky in terms of revenue. They also managed to develop new languages in just 90 days, a feat that typically takes larger companies like Google about three years, showcasing the agility and innovative spirit of their startup.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of a lateral thinking approach in problem-solving, highlighting that successful companies like Google, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, differentiated themselves from competitors like Yahoo and AOL by not being entrenched in industry norms. Their fresh perspective allowed them to innovate and succeed despite their lack of prior experience in the field.

The speaker discusses the critical trait of being a 'sponge' for knowledge, which enables entrepreneurs to learn at an accelerated pace compared to their peers. This ability to absorb information from various sources—customers, partners, employees, and investors—has contributed to the success of young entrepreneurs today. The speaker notes that despite having colleagues who earn significantly more and are older, their capacity to learn quickly has set them apart in navigating challenges such as fundraising and competitive positioning.

In summarizing the traits that contribute to success, the speaker identifies passion, perseverance, and specific talents as foundational. However, he underscores the unique combination of ignorance and the ability to learn rapidly as pivotal factors that have driven success in his own experience and in observing other successful stories. This duality of being uninformed yet eager to learn has proven effective in overcoming challenges in the entrepreneurial landscape.