Big Idea

Speak freely to your customers, this translator has your back

Vitra.ai’s platform can translate content to 50 different languages within minutes and at fraction of the regular cost  

Anyone with a social-media presence wonders ‘how many people did my content reach?’ Social media teams are scratching their heads over SEO keywords and hatching tactics to score millions of views and likes. It is either this, or paying a hefty sum to the search-engine giant to amplify their message. But, whatever the way they choose, there is one tough barrier to cross when pitching to a global audience—of language. Vitra.ai, a Bengaluru-based start-up, is here to change that with an easy-to-use translation tool.

Vitra.ai is an acronym for Video Translation using AI Tools. Founders, Satvik Jagannath and Akash Nidhi PS, stumbled upon the idea way back in 2017, when they took the Google News Innovation Challenge. Their idea was rejected back then, but they came back to it in 2019, when they were looking for business ideas. For one, the market opportunity looked big.

Today, if a media or an edtech company wants to target audiences not just in India but also in Asia and Europe, English content alone won’t do. But, the process of translation, if done manually, could take a couple of days. An hour-long video would require a transcriber, a linguistic expert, a dubbing artist and a studio. Using Vitra.ai’s website, things get done faster and with less effort—a 30-minute video can be converted within 10-12 minutes. This can be done using 50 different languages and 20 voices across age and gender, for video, audio, text and text-to-speech translation.

The tech goes beyond mere literal translation. It is context aware, says Jagannath, because it has semantic correction along with auto-correction and auto-suggestion features. As long as the video quality is perfect and the use of language is right, he claims the translator can do its job with 100% accuracy and at more competitive prices. While regular subtitling companies charge up to $8 per minute, Vitra.ai charges $3 per minute.

Since its official launch in December 2020, the start-up has 25 clients, among them 20 are B2B enterprises. It offers them monthly subscription for $49, $299 and $999 depending on the usage, and for enterprises, it has custom plans for anything between $999 and $12,000. Till date, Vitra.ai has received Rs 2.5 million in funding from 100X.VC.

It is estimated that the global machine translation market, which was valued at $550 million in 2019, will grow at 17% CAGR and reach $1.5 billion by 2026.

The start-up is looking to expand to the rest of Asia and to earn revenue of $6.45 million by FY23. Their more immediate goal, by the end of 2021, is to win over 100 mid-tier companies.

With the edtech space booming and media houses looking to cut costs, Vitra.ai can easily find the customer base it needs to take root. It is competitively priced and has a comprehensive tool. However, it has to make sure that it does not slip up on one crucial differentiator—on quality. With the multitude of options available to the consumer, content providers stand on a razor’s edge.