Similar efforts will happen in Indonesia and India, where Van said the app sees strong engagement and downloads without any paid marketing efforts.Įlsa is also working on expanding its content from English to include other languages. Elsa has opened an office in Tokyo and is planning to introduce more localized content for Japanese users. That’s the blueprint for expansion in its next three target countries: Japan, Indonesia and India.
Partly because it is Van’s home market, Elsa has doubled down on Vietnam with a local sales team and localized payments, including the likes of bank transfers and local wallets. The service has users in more than 100 countries, but Vietnam is its top market, with two million paying users. With this money in the bag, Elsa is going after growth in a number of its most promising markets. New content is added every week, Van said. That ranges from one month of access to 12 months.
Gradient ventures full#
The service uses a freemium model that grants users full access to 1,000 courses for around $3-6 per month depending on the length of the package they select. That helps track their progress, while it focuses on pronunciation with a detailed review on how a user is speaking.
“There are so many English learning solutions but they are mostly focused on expanding vocabulary or grammar, very few deal with pronunciation,” she added.Įlsa uses voice recognition and AI to grade a user’s speaking versus standard American English ( and I thought us Brits were the global standard…) giving them a score at the end. “This impacts confidence when you apply for jobs or are even just meeting friends.” “I was very good at grammar, reading and writing but I realized people had a hard time understanding me because I had a very strong accent and my pronunciation wasn’t proper,” Van, who is based in San Francisco but travels extensively, told TechCrunch in an interview. Xavier Anguera - the startup’s CTO who leads its Portugal-based tech team - Van started Elsa to help people in the same predicament. Together with speech recognition researcher Dr. Vu Van, CEO and one half of the founding team, is a Vietnamese national who, despite being fluent in English, struggled to be understood after moving to the U.S. Elsa has now raised $12 million to date.Įlsa was founded in 2015 as a way to help non-English speakers improve their accent and general speaking ability.
The deal is Gradient’s first in Asia, and it includes participation from existing investors Monk’s Hill Ventures and SOSV.
Gradient ventures series#
Google’s Gradient Ventures, the search giant’s dedicated AI fund, is casting its eye to Asia after it led a $7 million Series A round for Elsa, a startup that operates an app for English language learners.
0 kommentar(er)
