Verbit, a one-year-old startup operating in the professional transcription market, has landed $11m in seed funding.
The funding was led by HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Vertex Ventures and Oryzn Capital. Verbit operates in the professional transcription market, which is a multi-billion dollar market for its various connections to clients at different verticals such as financial services, legal, education, media resources, medical and media, among others.
“We already generated millions of dollars in revenue, but we’ve only just begun. With this funding the company set aggressive growth targets and significantly expanded product capabilities”, said cofounder Tom Livne. “As such, Verbit plans to double the number of employees in the coming year. As Livne explains, these steps must be taken in order to realize the company’s vision: “To make the world’s verbal content accessible and searchable”.
Its transcription solution uses a combination of AI technologies to achieve accuracy and speed, at a scale large enough to make the world’s audio and video content accessible according to its website. It integrates automatic speech recognition algorithms with human augmented refinement, with any correction made by human transcribers contributing to and improving the Verbit algorithm through machine learning technologies.
It differentiates itself from traditional transcription companies, which rely on manual work, resulting in expensive service costs and long turnaround times.
Because most of the transcription process takes place automatically, Verbit claims to have a major competitive cost structure. As a direct result, the final price per customer is significantly lower than competitors. The company charges its customers according to the audio/video minutes it transcribes, and it current client roaster already includes Ivy league universities and leading E-learning platforms such as Coursera, Udacity, and London Business School.
“Verbit’s offering to its customers is very simple – 100% accurate transcription service at a very competitive cost with the fastest turn around in the market,” explains Yanai Oron, GP at Vertex Ventures Investment Fund. “No wonder the company has reached such a great product market fit and was able to generate these kinds of revenues in its first year of existence. The funding should allow the company to expand to a number of new verticals while scaling its business in the existing verticals.”
Earlier this year, the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) came into force. With regards to voice recording, MiFID II stipulates that firms must conduct surveillance of key communications to ensure that they are compliant with market rules. In order for this to be effective, technology will need to be deployed to identify the context and impact of what is being spoken about, and can deliver insight into risks to ensure no wrongdoing is occurring. Most financial markets records retention regulations also demand electronic communications and voice recordings be preserved.
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