[100 Emerging Women Leaders] This entrepreneur’s platform makes speech therapy affordable, accessible in semi-urban areas

Born and raised in Kottayam, Kerala, Elizabeth Jean Thomas was the oldest of three girls. Her parents, both professors, wanted her to pursue a professional degree.

“Like other students during that time, I was also preparing for medical and engineering entrance exams when I heard about a degree in audiology and speech-language pathology from a family friend. This interested me hugely and changed my academic aspirations,” Thomas tells HerStory.

Many years later, she would become a first-generation entrepreneur and start Phonologix—an assistive technology startup to provide location-agnostic access to quality speech therapy services to every child or adult in need.

Thomas completed her bachelor’s degree in ASLP and finished her master’s from the Mumbai University.

After her marriage, she moved to different cities—Bengaluru, Chennai, and Gurugram—where she worked as a speech-language pathologist in various organisations and hospitals for over two decades.

Thomas’ last stint was at a startup that provided paediatric therapy services, where she headed the speech therapy department.

“In between all these stints, I contemplated starting a therapy centre, but I was not confident to take the step. Also, there was this concern that we may have to move cities because of my husband’s job,” she adds.

Taking therapy online

For over 15 years, teletherapy services have been common and a proven therapy mode in the US and other Western countries. However, in India, it was never an option due to network issues.

“There were no speech therapy centres in many smaller towns, and I used to get calls from parents asking for tips on how to help their children with special needs communicate,” she says.

Shortly after, one of Thomas’ clients, who moved to another city, suggested she conduct online speech therapy, which led her to partner with a friend, Praveena R, to start Phonologix in early 2020.

“Initially, we saw it more as an extension of our private practice. We had to convince parents about its efficacy. We did all the necessary research, and within a few months, the pandemic hit, and with all therapy centres closed, we started getting more clients,” she adds.

Gradually hiring more speech pathologists, the young startup also enrolled in the Women Startup Program at NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore, in September 2021, and by February 2021, was incubated there. It was officially registered in March 2021.

While brainstorming with mentors at NSRCEL, the team came up with the idea of developing an e-learning platform that aids speech therapy to scale.

However, the journey was not easy. Online therapy, especially for the speech impaired, was new, and the pandemic did not make the process easy either.

Thomas explains, “In online therapy, parents are the facilitators as many of the children are too young to sit in front of a screen, understand instruction or the material. The COVID-19 stress affected the parents who were also low on motivation. Many children who couldn’t continue their therapy offline had relapsed.”

In milder cases, she adds, therapy was effective in an in-person session. However, their persistence paid off, as everyone adapted to the changed circumstances.

Starting with two therapists, Phonologix has now grown to a team of 14 in four years, offering speech therapy for children and adults, a parent coaching programme, applied behaviour analysis, occupational therapy, and special education.

Making parents co-therapists

During the incubation phase at NSRCEL, brainstorming with mentors centred Thomas’ attention on the shortage of speech pathologists in India, which stood at just one for every 4,000 people.

Expanding its range of services, Phonologix launched its innovative e-learning platform, Speech Ally, in July 2023 with the help of grants from Startup India through the DERBI Foundation and Kerala Startup Mission.

“This guided platform offers a hierarchy of speech therapy goals and structured and automated gamified activities and also empowers parents to become co-therapists. The platform, combined with tele-therapy sessions by certified speech-language pathologists, can be taken by children from the comfort and privacy of their homes. Early intervention is possible from the age of one on the platform,” Thomas elaborates.

Speech Ally is available as a web-based platform and Android and iOS apps. The platform works on a subscription model and is combined with Phonologix’s other services. The therapy usually comprises 12 sessions a month.

It has users from all over India, including Darjeeling, Jaipur, Ajmer, Kottayam, Pathanamthitta, Kollam, Shimoga, Erode, Jammu, Tiruchirapalli, and many other semi-urban places.

“Speech Ally makes speech therapy affordable and accessible to semi-urban areas as many of the tasks can be shared by parents or caregivers. It helps with repeated practice of skills at home and aids in easy carry-over of skills, which leads to faster progress. It has 1000+ activities for children and 100+ video tutorials for parents,” Thomas adds.

Phonologix has served over 2,800 children and provided almost 30,000 online speech therapy sessions in 10+ countries, including India and the GCC. The therapy sessions are conducted in seven languages, including English, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, and Marathi.

After Praveena exited the company, Thomas’s husband, Jijo John, joined as the CTO of Phonologix. Along with a tech team, John takes care of product development, while Thomas focuses on increasing the team size and content development on the platform.

There is no right time to become an entrepreneur

Phonologix has also won some accolades along the way. Notable among them are the NCPEDP-MPHASIS Universal Design Award for Accessibility, winner of the India Chapter of She Loves Tech 2022, recipient of the VISA She’s Next Program and Stanford Seed Spark Program Top 6 grants.

“We are looking at partnering with organisations and providing B2B services to therapy centres, playschools, and others so they can avail of group subscriptions. We have started the Wings Rehabilitation Centre in Sharjah, UAE, and hope to expand there. We hope to serve at least 10,000 children by 2026,” she says.

Thomas believes women founders are constantly judged, their abilities questioned, and they have to work harder to prove they are capable.

“My first challenge was to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Transitioning from a private practitioner took some time. I had to learn everything from developing a good business model and cash flow to building a team and fundraising. As a startup, one of the biggest challenges is attracting good talent. As a social impact, women-led venture, funding has been another big challenge for us,” she says.

Thomas’ advice to women entrepreneurs stems from her own learnings.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Believe in yourself and your dreams. There is no right time to be an entrepreneur. When you feel ready, you should start, and don’t hesitate to ask for help,” she adds.