Software app 'Avaz' helps children with special needs express themselves

 Eleven-year-old special-needs children Yashank, Vijay and Sambhav, who study at Umang School in Jaipur, are able to understand the world but unable to communicate with it effectively. They have cerebral palsy, a condition marked by impaired muscle coordination.



                                  (In pic: A child using Avaz…)


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In the past, it would take a lot of time for teachers at Umang to understand even simple messages such as "I want an apple" or "I am hungry" from these children. But thanks to a picture-based software application, Avaz, that is changing. Avaz, developed by Chennai-based Invention Labs, allows the children to communicate by pointing out the pictures on a tablet using the software.

 It also gives voice output, helping them to learn better—a marked improvement from the paperbased picture communication book they used earlier. This innovation has enabled the firm to bag customers, such as Los Angeles Unified School District—the second-largest public school system in the United States—and Autism-Denmark, an association to advance the rights of persons with autism.



The company's founder, 32-year-old Ajit Narayanan worked at a US-based hardware and software firm American Megatrends Inc before returning to set up Invention Labs in 2007. Narayanan, an alumnus of IIT-Madras, initially launched the product in 2009 as a Rs 30,000 communication device that helped people with speech disorders. Now Invention Labs no longer markets the device.



Instead it now makes software that can be bought for Rs 5,000 and runs across mobile platforms. "The basic idea of the Avaz is to convert muscle movements into speech through features like pictures. For example, a user can put together different words like 'I like' and then select a picture of an apple. The sentence is constructed pictorially," said Narayanan.


The firm, which was incubated at IIT Madras, reached an inflection point in 2012 after deciding to turn its expertise to software. Besides India, Invention Labs now sells the software app for around Rs 5,000 in developed markets such as Europe, United States and Australia. In fact, the Danish and Italian version of Avaz is the only app available there to help the autistic, claimed Narayanan. It has improved the lives of both parents and children.



"After few attempts of trying to convey something, my daughter would get angry, if we were not able to understand her," said Radha Mani, mother of 18-year-old Dharunika who has cerebral palsy. "Her vocabulary has also improved, other solutions had limited vocabulary."



Invention Labs has received government grants and loans of about Rs 40 lakh from Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and a bank. Narayanan, who has been granted 28 patents by the US authorities, is now scouting for venture capital funding or a strategic investor. "Apart from patents, we will evaluate the company on the team, market size, differentiated technology or intellectual property," said Sandeep Singhal, managing director of Nexus Venture Partners, which manages around $600 million.



US-based Artiman Ventures, which manages a $750-million fund and makes investments in companies with large opportunities and no identifiable competitors, also sees what Invention Labs is doing as a big opportunity. "It is good to have a broad-based technology so that more people can benefit from it," said Ramesh Radhakrishnan, a partner at Artiman Ventures.



Invention Labs is also working on other technologies which will enable personalised therapy based on data analysis. It expects to achieve revenue of Rs 12 crore in 2015 from Avaz-related products. "The key to scale is to build a strong differentiation around intellectual property and not just around price," said Nexus' Singhal.


Source : The Economic Times , 24th Jan 2014