Maulik and Mausam, like us, too had learnt that necessity is the mother of invention at school. Just that the duo, unlike majority of us, put their need into a perspective and invented a solution that has made them entrepreneurs today.
Four years ago, when the two couldn’t find a Text To Speech (TTS) system in Indian accent for one of their projects, they decided to build one for Indian eco system. The understanding of Neuro-linguistic programming in Indian accent was a challenge, Maulik and Mausam set up a team and dedicated three years for the development of TTS mechanism. Though the startup is still in the R&D stage, it claims to be the first Indian company to make text to speech a commercial entity in localization space.
Indian TTS, which has three variants – English, Hindi and mixed (Hindi and English), launched its first version of the product in May 2016. Within three months, 30,000 requests from potential clients started flooding the firm daily. It witnesses 5,000 online interactions and their voice solitions offers at Ivrs, Robots and in accessibility sector. It has also received funding under the Gujart startup support Fund scheme, Government of Gujarat.
Mausam says “What we are building is a unique technology for India. We were among the top 10 innovations for the Digital India challenge, and second in the world, after Nuance, to experiment with Hindi as a TTS solution.”
The company is piloting with 22 corporate B2B clients and other 30+ start-ups likewise for their technology solutions. TTS is incubated at Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM Ahmedabad. Maulik says, “Indian TTS, with a dedicated team of 39 members, has been making a steady progress with average monthly revenue of Rs 5 lakh.”
Vibrant Gujarat Start-Up Summit
Mahatma Mandir, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India
21-22 October, 2016 | 9 AM