Vocal Image Is Using Ai To Help People Communicate Better

With 4 cardinal app downloads, Estonia-based startup Vocal Image intends to thief group amended their sound and connection skills pinch AI-powered coaching. But retired of its 160,000 progressive users, it whitethorn beryllium its CEO, Nick Lakhoika, who champion embodies its mission. 

Lakhoika was calved successful Belarus, didn’t speak English until his relocation to Estonia, and erstwhile struggled pinch speaking anxiety. Yet, he went connected to “win a batch of transportation competitions” connected behalf of nan sound coaching startup, which was inspired by his journey, he told TechCrunch.

“When I was astatine school, I was a small spot bullied for unclear diction,” Lakhoika said. In his early twenties, arsenic a young, insecure founder, he met a vocal coach, Maryna “Rusia” Shukiurava, who taught him that sound and connection could beryllium trained. 

To thief others, they started a YouTube transmission that yet shape-shifted into Vocal Image, which positions its subscription-based app arsenic an affordable replacement to one-on-one coaching you tin usage astatine home. “You tin make unusual movements, unusual sounds […] and consciousness safe,” Lakhoika said.

With an interactive room that includes lingua twisters, breathing exercises, and proposal connected gestures, Vocal Image is besides leaning much and much into AI to springiness automated feedback and personalized tips, acknowledgment successful large portion to nan summation of co-founder and CTO Mikalai Karaliou, Lakhoika said.

These guided journeys mostly revolve astir work-related goals specified arsenic enhancing master aliases activity skills, and processing nationalist speaking aliases position abilities. But Vocal Image besides supports group who simply want to summation their self-confidence, arsenic good arsenic LGBTQ people, whose authorities Shukiurava had been supporting successful Belarus.

While nan trio is from Belarus, they were among nan galore Belarusian founders who near their location state aft protests grounded to oust President Alexander Lukashenko and were met pinch brutal repression. Lakhoika picked Estonia for its business environment, which has truthful acold proven favorable for nan startup.

Shortly aft relocating to Tallinn, Vocal Image joined section accelerator Startup Wise Guys, which considers nan startup arsenic 1 of its “success stories” owed to its accelerated growth. According to Lakhoika, nan startup subsequently reached $6.5 cardinal successful yearly recurring gross (ARR) connected little than $1 cardinal successful pre-seed funding.

More recently, nan startup raised a $3.6 cardinal seed information led by French edtech VC patient Educapital, pinch information from Specialist VC retired of Estonia and Generations Fund retired of Germany, TechCrunch learned exclusively. 

As of August, nan startup now claims $12 cardinal of ARR and immoderate 50,000 paid users, Lakhoika said. With a squad of 20 people, including a mostly of Belarusian exiles, Vocal Image now plans to turn its improvement squad and deploy much localizations (in summation to English, Spanish, German, French, Ukrainian and Russian).

This backing comes not agelong aft nan startup was picked by Hugging Face, Meta, and Scaleway arsenic 1 of nan 5 winners of their European AI Startup Program, but besides astatine a clip erstwhile it is facing accrued competition. For instance, edtech institution Headway precocious added an AI-powered reside trainer to its societal skills app, Skillsta. But Vocal Image tin count connected its ain GDPR-compliant AI trove.

With immoderate 35,000 recordings a day, Vocal Image has amassed much than 1 cardinal real-voice samples. Even better, these recordings are labelled by nan organization done Voice Rating, a collaborative characteristic that lets users determine whether others sound “confident” aliases “childlike.” 

This is nan benignant of dataset that apps for illustration Vocal Image sorely request successful bid to amended their accuracy. It could besides thief AI startups fine-tune their artificial voices, creating further tailwinds for nan startup beyond its B2C roots.