Vlad Andriescu
The amount targeted by equity crowdfunding is 175,000 euros. The round is also financed by private investors along with GapMinder VC - that continue to support the project, and Cleverage VC. The two funds and the private investors finance VoxiKids with 115,000 euros. The company's pre-money valuation is 2.5 million euros.
“Listing on SeedBlink is an opportunity for VoxiKids to become one of the leading products in the e-health market. We will be able to add important functionalities to the platform, to accelerate the marketing & sales area, but also to expand in other countries, like United Kingdom and USA. We want our platform to be used in as many houses, kindergartens and speech therapy offices as possible because the acquisition of language in early childhood is essential for the emotional and social development of the child", says AnaMaria Onică, CEO and co-founder of Speakquest, the company that owns VoxiKids brand.
34 million children in need of speech therapy
VoxiKids was launched in March 2019 by AnaMaria Onică (36 years old), Cristian Băiță (38 years old), and Adrian Enache (31 years old). It was launched as a mobile MVP (minimum viable product) - for iOS and Android- and currently has over 10,000 downloads.
“The idea to develop a product dedicated to speech therapy came up in 2018 when we were looking for a field where we could launch a startup that would be aligned with our vision and also have a major social impact. We started to research the e-health area, and that's how we found out that in Romania, there are over 500,000 children in need of speech therapy, and globally there are over 34 million children who are facing the same problem. Choosing to pursue this niche was also based on personal reason because I have unilateral hypoacusis and it was easy for me to understand what these children are going through", says AnaMaria Onică.
Partnership with Politehnica University of Bucharest
During the last months, entrepreneurs were focused to develop a SaaS platform that connects parents with speech therapists and makes possible online speech therapy. The beta version of the platform will be launched until December 2020, right now is being tested in 25 speech therapy offices. Also, at the beginning of 2021, the final version of the mobile application will be launched.
The app will also incorporate an artificial intelligence module (voice processing) that is created in partnership with Politehnica University of Bucharest.
“VoxiKids application is a link between education and health, which democratizes children's access to a unique speech therapy resource on the local market. The platform has global scaling potential, so we are talking about typical ingredients for SeedBlink - enhanced equity crowdfunding campaigns" says Andrei Dudoiu, co-founder and CEO of SeedBlink.
Entrepreneurs aim for the product to be used in over 1,000 speech therapy offices in the next 12 months and to impact the lifes of nearly 17,000 children in Romania. Thus, next year the company could reach a turnover of 720,000 euros on the Romanian market.
The final version of the SaaS platform will contain 20 modules that offer: online therapy, specialized content (exercises, homework), administrative instruments (document management), communication tools (relevant notes), patient management tools (monitoring progress, adjusting therapy, evaluations). The team is also working on creating content for children with disabilities such as Autism, Down Syndrome.
VoxiKids plans on reaching the US and UK markets beginning with 2021
The company’s goal is to become an international leader for digital e-health solutions by 2023
"A parent takes the child to speech therapy once or twice per week. Once home, a parent doesn’t know what type of exercises to practice, also the communication between parent and speech is irregular or incomplete. With all these aspects in mind, we set out to create an opportunity in a less explored market. Because we understood the importance of learning through play, all the exercises that can be found in the SaaS platform were also brought in a mobile app and gamified so that practicing the language at home is attractive for children”, explains Cristian Băiță, CIO and co-founder.
The three co-founders’ plan is to attract international customers at the beginning of spring 2021 - the first targeted countries are the English-speaking markets like UK and US. Thus, the VoxiKids team is preparing to enroll in 2,400 offices and 140,000 children from the UK and US markets in the next year. On the other hand, entrepreneurs want to expand the business on three different markets yearly, becoming one of the most important providers of e-health solutions in 2023.
