Sanas taps AI to change call center workers’ accents in real time

The demand for voice and speech recognition applied sciences is huge — and rising. An evaluation by market analysis agency Markets and Markets discovered that the sector could possibly be price over $28.1 billion by 2027.

There’s no scarcity of distributors offering voice and speech recognition options, however some newer upstarts have managed to carve out niches. Sanas is an effective instance. Based in 2020, the corporate develops software program that makes use of AI to regulate a speaker’s accent in real-time.

“At Sanas, we imagine that whereas expertise is remodeling the trade, it shouldn’t exchange human connection, however moderately, improve it,” Sharath Keshava Narayana, Sanas’ co-founder and president, instructed Trendster. “With the variety of buyer interactions persevering with to scale globally, the necessity for human-to-human communication stays vital.”

Maxim Serebryakov launched Sanas with Shawn Zhang and Andrés Soderi whereas in school. The trio was impressed by a fellow scholar’s irritating expertise working in a name middle.

“Max and Shawn’s pal, Raul, who needed to return to Nicaragua to help his household, confronted accent discrimination at his name middle job,” Narayana stated. “His expertise with ‘accent neutralization coaching’ and the toll it took on him impressed Max and Shawn to construct an answer to cut back accent bias.”

In 2021, Narayana, who beforehand co-founded name middle startup Observe.ai, joined Sanas, and the corporate secured its first tranche of funding.

Sanas’ expertise analyzes speech and outputs transformed speech that matches a specified accent. The corporate claims it is ready to protect the unique speaker’s emotion and “identification” whereas minimizing reverb, echo, and noise.

“What units Sanas aside is the corporate’s patented AI applied sciences, which acknowledge phonetic patterns and regulate them immediately whereas maintaining the speaker’s distinctive identification intact,” Narayana stated. “Sanas’s AI fashions are educated with over 50 million utterances of speech utilizing datasets collected from our expertise companions and in-house voice actors.”

Not too long ago, Sanas acquired InTone, a competitor, which Narayana stated “strengthens Sanas’ IP portfolio” and positions the startup to serve a wider buyer base.

Right now, Sanas has round 50 prospects in industries together with healthcare, logistics, and {hardware} manufacturing. Narayana stated that the corporate’s annual recurring income has reached $21 million, up $3 million from final yr.

Sanas is in a little bit of a controversial enterprise. Some analysis means that publicity to completely different accents in truth helps to fight bias. As technologists instructed The Guardian in a 2022 profile of the startup, Sanas’ options run the chance of homogenizing staff throughout name facilities.

Narayana pushed again in opposition to this notion.

“What makes Sanas particular is not only the expertise, however its deeply human mission to interrupt boundaries, scale back discrimination, and amplify voices throughout the globe,” he stated. “Along with my co-founders, we’re constructing a world the place communication is a bridge — not a barrier.”

The combined optics don’t seem to have impacted Sanas’ potential to boost money. This week, Sanas introduced that it closed a $65 million funding spherical that values the corporate at over $500 million. Quadrille Capital and Teleperformance led the spherical, which additionally had participation from Perception Companions, Quiet Capital, Alorica, and DN Capital.

Having raised over $100 million in capital so far, Sanas plans to construct new “speech-to-speech” algorithms, increase to new areas, and “discover alternatives throughout industries comparable to healthcare, retail, and
past,” Narayana stated.

“With a transparent deal with scaling responsibly and innovating constantly, Sanas is well-prepared to climate potential headwinds,” he continued.

Sanas additionally intends to develop its roughly-150-person crew, Narayana added, and open a brand new workplace within the Philippines, a rustic house to hundreds of thousands of contact facilities.