With 4 million downloads of its app, the Estonia-based company Vocal Image aims to assist individuals in enhancing their voice and communication abilities through AI-driven coaching. Among its 160,000 active users, CEO Nick Lahoika may exemplify its mission the most.
Born in Belarus and not speaking English until he moved to Estonia, Lahoika previously battled speaking anxiety. Nevertheless, he has gone on to “win a lot of pitch competitions” representing the voice coaching startup that was inspired by his experiences, as he shared with TechCrunch.
“When I was at school, I was a little bit bullied for unclear diction,” Lahoika recalled. In his early twenties, as a young, self-doubting entrepreneur, he encountered vocal coach Maryna “Rusia” Shukiurava, who showed him that voice and communication skills can indeed be developed.
In order to assist others, they launched a YouTube channel that eventually evolved into Vocal Image, marketing its subscription-based app as a cost-effective substitute for personal coaching that users can access from home. “You can make strange movements, strange sounds […] and feel safe,” Lahoika explained.
Vocal Image features an interactive library filled with tongue twisters, breathing techniques, and guidance on body language, and it is increasingly utilizing AI to provide automated feedback and tailored advice, largely due to the contributions of co-founder and CTO Mikalai Karaliou, according to Lahoika.
Most of these guided sessions focus on workplace objectives such as enhancing professional or leadership competencies and improving public speaking or presentation skills. However, Vocal Image also assists individuals aiming to boost their self-esteem, including those from the LGBTQ community, whose rights Shukiurava championed in Belarus.
Although the trio hails from Belarus, they were among countless founders who departed their homeland following unsuccessful protests against President Alexander Lukashenko, which were met with severe repression. Lahoika chose Estonia for its supportive business landscape, which has thus far proven beneficial for the startup.
Soon after moving to Tallinn, Vocal Image participated in the local accelerator Startup Wise Guys, which regards the startup as one of its success stories due to its rapid expansion. According to Lahoika, the startup subsequently achieved $6.5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with less than $1 million in seed funding.
Recently, the startup secured $3.6 million in seed funding led by French edtech VC firm Educapital, with contributions from Specialist VC in Estonia and Generations Fund in Germany, as TechCrunch discovered exclusively.
As of August, the startup reports $12 million in ARR and around 50,000 paid subscribers, Lahoika stated. With a team of 20 members, primarily composed of Belarusian expatriates, Vocal Image now intends to expand its development team and introduce additional localizations (in addition to existing languages such as English, Spanish, German, French, Ukrainian, and Russian).
This investment comes shortly after the startup was selected by Hugging Face, Meta, and Scaleway as one of the five winners in their European AI Startup Program, and during a time when it is encountering growing competition. For example, the edtech firm Headway has recently incorporated an AI-driven speech trainer into its social skills application, Skillsta. Despite this, Vocal Image can rely on its own GDPR-compliant AI resources.
With approximately 35,000 recordings made daily, Vocal Image has collected over 1 million real-voice samples. Furthermore, these recordings are categorized by the community through Voice Rating, a collaborative feature that allows users to determine whether others sound “confident” or “childlike.”
This type of dataset is essential for apps like Vocal Image to enhance their precision. It could also assist AI startups in refining their artificial voices, creating additional benefits for the startup beyond its B2C origins.
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