Chch startup raising funds to go global
Smart phone app creators raising funds to expand internationally.
The company founded by two University
of Canterbury students in November 2018 is seeking $400,000
to expand overseas.
Vxt uses speech recognition “trained
on Kiwi accents” to convert voicemails to text for users
to read in the app, or via email. They are also developing
tools which use artificial intelligence to automate bookings
and event scheduling.
One of a growing number of
subscription service startups, their paid service starts at
$5.99 per month.
Co-founded by twenty-somethings Luke
Campbell and Lucy Turner, the Christchurch-based startup
already boasts more than 2500 active users and around 200
subscribers.The duo started the business as a part of the UC
Centre for Entrepreneurship Summer Startup Programme where
students receive scholarships to work on business ideas
full-time over the summer.
Campbell came up with the
idea for Vxt after his own frustration with receiving
voicemail.
“Calling voicemail, checking the
messages, trying to write down the name and phone number to
call back on; the whole process is so painfully slow and
inefficient.
“I figured if I had the problem just
receiving a few voicemails, people who receive hundreds
every month would be at their wits’ end! Converting
voicemail messages to text seemed like a really obvious
solution and one which we can add all sorts of other useful
features to.”, he says.
Campbell convinced Turner, a computer science graduate, to join him given her technical background and their previous history working together on successful projects.
With about 2 million voicemails
left every day in New Zealand, Campbell says the business
has tapped into a big opportunity.
“The intelligent virtual assistant market is projected to grow from about 3 billion today to 30 billion dollars by 2025” Campbell says.
Since the company was founded they have raised
more than $100,000, received backing from Google for up to
$150,000 of their costs and more recently were one of five
companies selected to participate in the Vodafone xone
Partner Series in association with BNZ.
The company of
six plans to use these new funds to “grow as fast as
possible” by launching their business in Australia, the
United Kingdom, the United States and Canada by November
this year.
Campbell said in the long term their goal
is to reach “hundreds of thousands of users around the
world and sell the business”.
Timeline for
Vxt,
• Work on Vxt started in November 2018 as part of
the University of Canterbury's Summer Start-up
Programme
• Work on the business continued on a
part-time basis during 2019 while Luke & Lucy were full-time
students.
• In early 2019 Vxt was accepted into the
Google Cloud Platform for Startups where up to $150,000 NZD
of their costs are covered.
• In late June Vxt
raised a modest amount of cash to hire 3 additional students
and "cracked into development".
• After just six
weeks of development the team of five launched the first
version of their app.
• In October, Vxt was
announced a Grand Winner of the Annual $85K Startup
Challenge run by Entre at the University of
Canterbury.
• In December, Vxt was accepted into the
Vodafone xone Accelerator for 2020.
• Vxt is
currently accepting expressions of interest to participate
in their seed fundraising round.