YC-Backed EzDubs Chases Consumer Market for Translation Services

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A Market Worth Billions

The global translation service market is a behemoth worth around $40 billion, with enterprise services representing a significant share. However, for consumers, apps like Google Translate and Apple Translate have dominated the scene, but they lack support for calls or voice messages. This gap in functionality has given rise to innovative startups that aim to solve this problem of person-to-person translation.

EzDubs: A Revolutionary Translation App

Y Combinator-backed startup EzDubs is one such company that wants to revolutionize real-time translation in communication through its app, which supports translation for calls, voice messages, and text in over 30 languages. Founded by Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, Amrutavarsh Kinagi, and Kareem Nassar in 2023, the startup has been making waves with its innovative approach to language translation.

The Founding Story

The journey of EzDubs began when Krishnamurthy and Kinagi met during college in Hong Kong. During that time, they built a project that read lips and translated speech into text for people with hearing loss. In 2021, the duo moved to Columbia University and started working on video dubbing. It was there that they met Nassar, who was leading Cisco’s Speech AI Group while studying part-time for a master’s degree.

Building EzDubs

Nassar had worked on real-time speech AI products and later created a meeting intelligence startup, Voicea, which he sold to Cisco. The trio officially started building EzDubs after enrolling in Y Combinator’s 2023 batch with a dubbing model and an early version of a translation tool.

Early Success

The company first built a Twitter/X bot that translated clips posted on the platform and released it in January 2023. This bot, which has more than 340,000 followers, gets more than 500 dub requests per day, with translated videos getting over a million daily views. In July 2023, EzDubs launched a bot on WhatsApp that allowed users to translate voice messages and videos.

The Birth of the App

However, this process had its limitations, as users had to forward a voice message to the bot, get the reply translated, and send it back. This led to the creation of the EzDubs app, which supports real-time translation for calls, voice messages, and text in over 30 languages.

Key Features

The EzDubs app has several key features that set it apart from other translation apps:

Real-time Translation: EzDubs provides instant translation for calls, voice messages, and text.
Multi-Language Support: The app supports translation in over 30 languages.
Voice-to-Voice Translation: Users can engage in real-time conversations with people who speak a different language.

Fundraising

EzDubs has received significant funding from Y Combinator and other investors. This investment has enabled the company to expand its team and continue developing its innovative technology.

Future Plans

The EzDubs app is poised for growth, with several exciting features in the pipeline:

Extension for Popular Apps: The startup plans to build an extension for apps like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Slack.
Default Phone Calling App: EzDubs aims to make its app a default phone calling app, enabling it to handle incoming calls.

Conclusion

EzDubs is revolutionizing the way we communicate across languages. With its innovative approach to real-time translation, the startup has the potential to disrupt the global translation service market. As EzDubs continues to grow and develop, it’s an exciting time for language enthusiasts and entrepreneurs alike.