Business Summary:
VOXAVOX is a developer of, and commercialization vehicle for, real time voice to voice translation technology and applications.

Problem: 
The increase in worldwide population migration and travel has created a barrier to language communication. The need for real time voice to voice translation is increasing dramatically, and the cost and availability of human interpreters will never satisfy the demand. In the 2007 report from the E.U. High Level Group on Multilingualism, it states that: …Europe suffers from a shortage of interpreters who can work in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean…

Solution: 

Current machine based translation technologies have focussed on literary and other text based content, greatly improving translation accuracy. By taking the best concepts from current translation technologies and integrating them with VOXAVOX technologies, we have demonstrated that near real time voice to voice translation is achievable on relatively low computing power devices such as set top boxes and mobile phones. Quality and accuracy have been consistently high enough to convey the intended meaning, and will continue to improve with further development. In the very near future the universal language translator, once a science fiction concept, will become reality. 

 

Target Market:
The company’s focus is real time voice to voice translation for interactive television and Smart Phones and other devices. Interactive television target customers are immigrants who do not speak the native language and native speaking language viewers who access international sports, news and other programming. According to the US bureau of statistics, “Nearly 1-in-5 people, or 47 million U.S. residents age 5 and older, spoke a language other than English at home in 2000” The VOXAVOX solution has been in preliminary trials with a major US cable operator, and we will continue to pursue this market.  The company is now migrating the technology to the Smart Phone platform as a real time voice to voice translation application for international business and leisure travel customers. According to Gartner Group, the smartphone market has shown marked growth in 2008 and will continue to do so in 2009. VOXAVOX intends to support Smart Phone platforms such as the Blackberry, which has the highest market share in North America.

 

Market Strategy:
VOXAVOX will drive brand awareness through ‘two screens’, a unique VOXAVOX translation icon that will be integrated with third party content and applications. VOXAVOX functionality and presence and the availability with the ‘two screens’ on third party devices will benefit VOXAVOX’s brand equity across multiple platforms. VOXAVOX plans to grow the user base of its application by focusing on licensing through existing channels such as mobile operators, handset manufacturers, cable operators, etc. VOXAVOX will also make the application available directly to mobile customers through online stores such as Handango and RIM’s “Built for Blackberry”.

Business Model:

VOXAVOX will derive revenue from direct customer sales and recurring licensing fees. Direct sales to business customers and product licensing for inclusion in smartphones will provide shorter term revenues. VOXAVOX will also pursue a service model through partnerships with Cable and Mobile Operators which will provide a scalable recurring revenue stream. Over time, VOXAVOX plans to extend it’s partnerships with other third party service providers and to adapt technology for other markets

 

Competitors:
VOXAVOX is positioned at the intersection of language translation and voice synthesis technologies and is expected to co-exist, compete or partner with a range of companies, though no direct competitors currently exist. A number of companies address certain aspects of this market, such as text translation, voice based search, text readers, etc.

 

Competitive Advantage:
VOXAVOX’s competitive advantage is the depth and breadth of experience possessed by the principles in the development and deployment of compelling application for embedded and mobile devices. The unique demands of limited computational resources, simple user interface, small, low resolution screens, and limited audio resolution will create a significant barrier to entry. VOXAVOX has developed proprietary optimization technology for improving performance of speech to speech translation.

 

Intellectual Property:
The core intellectual property of the company resides in processing optimizations that are currently patent pending in the United States and filed in Canada.  The optimizations include fuzzy logic analysis of input data, statistical machine translation and statistical methods for predicting phrase completion.  The completion algorithms assist in keeping the translation synchronized closely to the original speech.  The intellectual property also includes optimizations for the modeling and storage of voices for several languages, based on syllables rather than words.

 

Use of Seed Capital:

The seed capital will be used for productization, marketing and business development