Invitalia Ventures and Principia SGR with TIM Ventures have led a Round A worth one million and 400 thousand euros in Pedius, the startup that has developed an application that allows deaf people to make normal phone calls, using speech recognition and synthesis technologies.
Thanks to Pedius, technology changes the lives of those suffering from profound deafness and breaks down communication barriers, allowing the deaf to access services performed only by voice, such as emergency calls, assistance and customer care.
Here are some numbers to get a more precise idea of the great impact generated by Pedius: profound deafness affects on average one person in a thousand, of which 70.000 in Italy alone. In our country there are more than 5 million people with general hearing problems, while this figure exceeds 300 million worldwide.
The startup has developed both consumer solutions that allow individuals to make phone calls, and business solutions, with the dual objective of allowing companies to activate a toll-free number that allows customers with hearing impairments to contact customer service and to encourage inclusion of workers belonging to protected categories.
This unique platform can now be downloaded in 9 countries (including Italy, France, UK, Spain and the United States) and in 6 different languages. Pedius already collaborates with some large companies such as TIM (with which it developed the first call center accessible to deaf people), BNL, HP, Axa Assistance, as well as with some Italian municipalities. Today it has over 13.000 users, with a 40% growth rate over the past year.
The investment round will allow the startup to invest in support of the go to market in emerging countries and build the commercial network. In addition, Pedius will develop new products starting with a device aimed at the elderly.
