Breaking the language barrier: Using AI to make videos, podcasts accessible

Finding an interesting video or article online, only to later realise that it is in an unfamiliar language can be disappointing. To solve this problem, Akash Nidhi P S and Satvik Jagannath founded the AI-based video translation platform Vitra.ai.

“In today’s time, everyone is creating content, whether it is a $100B company or an influencer on Instagram. But many of them fail to reach a wider audience because of the language barrier,” Satvik Jagannath, Co-Founder of Vitra.ai says.

Founded in 2020, the platform helps customers translate all rich content media formats like videos, images, websites, podcasts, and text to over 75 languages. Vitra.ai says its solutions are 100X faster and 80% cheaper than any manual process in the world.

The platform supports languages such as Arabic, Bangla, Dutch, Gujarati and more.

While Vitra.ai’s primary focus is on news, social media, and video content creators, the startup has also engaged with a broad spectrum of clients across industries such as edtech, media, fintech, and health tech.

“We are helping businesses and influencers reach more people by translating their content to more languages. Our product helps people understand content in a language, they are comfortable with,” Jagannath tells YourStory.

Nidhi PS elaborates that the global market size for translation is $72.22 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach $98.11 billion by 2028.

Vitra.ai participated in the Tech 30 Pitch Fest at TechSparks Bengaluru 2023, YourStory’s flagship event

Calling it “a remarkable experience”, the founders say that the event provided them with recognition and invaluable learning opportunities.

“This platform [Tech30] not only showcased our innovative AI-driven language solutions to a broad audience of investors, industry experts, and peers but also allowed us to gain insightful feedback, refine our strategies, and foster significant connections. The insights gained from market trends and competitive landscapes during the fest have been instrumental in our growth and continue to shape our journey in the global tech landscape,” Nidhi PS says.

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How it works

Vitra.ai has three products: translate.video, translate.website, translate.photo that lets the user translate videos, websites and images respectively in a language of their choice. The products are drag-and-drop and no-code solution, making it easy for anyone to use.

“On average, a 10-minute long video will take about five to six minutes to translate,” Nidhi PS adds.

The startup’s primary focus is on B2B enterprises like HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Star, ICICI Securities, and more. It has also launched a B2C SaaS product called Translate.video, which is targeted towards influencers.

“We work with enterprises today in India. They are large listed enterprises that have marketing teams that want to scale their business to all parts of the country by translating content to local languages. We are also working with influencers who want to reach more people by translating their content to more languages,” Jagannath adds.

Unlike traditional systems, the Bengaluru-based startup doesn't do literal word-to-word translations, instead, it says it uses a context-aware engine for more natural and human-like translations. The AI-based platform includes auto-suggestion, auto-correction, and semantic correction features.

It has a proprietary voice cloning engine which has cross-language voice cloning capabilities. This technology clones the voice of the original video while translating it into the other language.

“It's state-of-the-art and one of the first in the world to use it in production,” Jagannath adds.

Talking about competition, Jagannath says that there are translation agencies such as TransPerfect, Lionbridge, WeLocalize and startups like PaperCup, Devnagri, Dubverse.ai, DubDub.ai that are working in the same space.

“We have a few companies trying to solve a part of the problem in the space of translation (for example: video). But, we are the only company in the world that can translate all rich content media formats to 75 languages,” he says.

After being bootstrapped for the first six months, the startup has raised funds by 100x.vc and Inflexor VC. So far, it has secured around $560,000 in funding.

“Overall we've seen good growth with enterprises and now with influencers we've had over 40,000 organic signups in the last few months,” Jagannath shares.

Talking about the future, Jagannath says, “We want to become the go-to translation platform for all rich content media formats. We want to break the language barrier and make the web accessible to the next few billions of people and eventually everyone.”