Question

YOU BE THE VC 6.2   COMPANY: Ava

Pitch: It is difficult for people who are deaf or hearing- impaired to follow conversations in group settings such as a family dinner, a business meeting, a presentation, or lunch with friends. Even in a setting where every par- ticipant knows sign language, picking up an entire con- versation is challenging. Sign language relies on people watching each other sign, and in a group setting people often talk that are not directly looking at each other. The only option that people with hearing problems have to fully capture a group conversation is to hire a transcriber or interpreter. That’s an impractical solution, given that transcribers and interpreters charge up to $125 per hour. Hearing aids are available for people who are hearing- impaired, but the cost is often a deterrent and hearing aids have varying levels of effectiveness.
Ava is a smartphone app designed to tackle this problem. Here’s how it works. Ava connects all the smartphones in a room via an app. All a person with hearing difficulties has to do is invite the people in the room to participate, and if they have Ava on their phones, they can accept the invite. Ava will then, through the microphone in each par- ticipant’s smartphone, transcribe the conversation in real time and display the transcription on the hearing-impaired person’s phone. Each person’s comments include their name and show up in a different color. Ava’s interface will also show a small photo of each person who is involved with the conversation. So if Jane, who is deaf, invites Ava at the beginning of a family dinner, and all the members of Jane’s family have the Ava app and accept Jane’s invite, Jane can follow the conversation on her smartphone. The transcriptions, which are made possible via the speech recognition technology, are made in less than one second. Ava allows people with hearing difficulties to connect, engage, and enjoy rather than dread group conversa- tions. The value that Ava adds to its users’ lives is very personal for two of its three founders, Thibault Duchemin and Skinner Cheng. Cheng has been deaf since he was two years old and Duchemin is a coda, meaning he grew up with deaf family members.
There are 360 million people in the world who are deaf or hearing-impaired, which is roughly 5 percent of the world’s population. Ava’s mission is to make its solution available to anyone who can benefit from it anywhere, enriching the social engagement of the people who utilize the service.

If you had to make your decision on just the information provided in the pitch and on the company’s website, would you fund this company? Why or why not?

Answer 1

If the 5% of the world's population is hearing impaired, it is a huge market even if one out of ten persons likes to use the application ( owing to inability to own or operate a smartphone due to a number of reasons, limited or no internet connectivity, social stigma, particularly in developing countries which form a major chunk of this population and many other issues). Though the market size is huge, there is a need to educate the customers, first about their illness, about which many will be unaware and indifferent if aware, and then about the device that can change the quality of their lives dramatically, so that they may accept the product happily once they know about it.

Despite all challenges, I would be willing to invest in this venture because it is formed by some passionate individuals woking for a noble cause, and are desperate to revolutionise the lives of hearing impaired. Being a part of such initiative itself is a satisfying feeling, even if the returns are low. I expect the ROI to be better once the product is accepted by the target group and they understand its utility.