Nagish, an Israeli tech firm dedicated to improving phone communication for hearing-impaired individuals, has successfully raised $11 million in a Series A funding round. This round was spearheaded by Canaan Partners, with significant contribution from other investors like K5 Global, Tokyo Black, Cardumen Capital, Vertex Ventures Israel, Contour Venture Partners, and Precursor Ventures. Interestingly, founders of Datadog and Looker also participated.
The funding will support Nagish’s ongoing aims to enhance their technology and extend their service’s reach globally, reflecting the solid investor belief in Nagish’s mission and technological solutions. So far, Nagish’s total fundraising has reached an impressive $16 million.
Nagish employs AI to realize its pledge of making telephonic communication accessible to the over a billion hearing-impaired people worldwide.
Nagish’s funding round boosts deaf services
Its unique approach eliminates the need for intermediaries, offering functionalities such as real-time transcription, adaptable text display, and an intuitive interface enabling speech-to-text and text-to-speech conversion. An added advantage lies in the ability to save transcriptions for future reference.
Despite the emphasis on transcription services, Nagish’s CEO, Tomer Aharoni, insists that the company’s main focus is on accessibility. Aharoni remains resolute in creating solutions that address the communication difficulties faced by the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.
In a noteworthy development, Nagish was recently authorized by the U.S Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to offer automatic simultaneous translation services, placing it in direct competition with firms relying on traditional human translators. This recognition alludes to Nagish’s potential to tap into a U.S market estimated to be worth around $2 billion, mainly due to the high costs related to employing sign-language interpreters or simultaneous translators.
Originally initiated as a hobby project in 2019 by Tomer Aharoni and Alon Ezer, Nagish swiftly gained momentum during the COVID-19 lockdowns, as the need for their transcription and translation tool grew. The subsequent stream of investments and resources has allowed for more development projects and improvements to their existing services, consolidating Nagish’s position as a crucial tool for ensuring accessibility for the deaf community.
