Vocal Image Utilizes AI to Improve Communication Skills

Vocal Image, an Estonian startup with 4 million app downloads, aims to improve people’s voice and communication abilities through AI-based coaching. Among its 160,000 active users, CEO Nick Lakhoika embodies the company’s mission strongly.

Originally from Belarus, Lakhoika moved to Estonia without knowing English and grappled with speaking anxiety. Despite this, he has earned multiple pitch competition victories for his voice coaching startup, inspired by his own experiences, which he discussed with TechCrunch.

“I was bullied in school for my unclear speech,” Lakhoika recalled. In his early twenties, he met a vocal coach named Maryna “Rusia” Shukiurava, who introduced him to the idea of training one’s voice and communication abilities.

To help others, they created a YouTube channel that eventually transformed into Vocal Image, offering a subscription-based app that serves as an affordable alternative to in-person coaching, accessible from home. “You can engage in unique movements and sounds with confidence,” Lakhoika said.

Featuring an interactive library of tongue twisters, breathing exercises, and gesture tips, Vocal Image is increasingly incorporating AI to deliver automated feedback and personalized insights, largely thanks to contributions from co-founder and CTO Mikalai Karaliou, according to Lakhoika.

The guided experiences focus largely on professional goals like refining leadership skills or improving public speaking and presentation techniques. Vocal Image also aids those looking to enhance their self-esteem, including LGBTQ individuals, whom Shukiurava has championed in Belarus.

Although the founders stem from Belarus, they represent many expatriates who left after severe crackdowns on anti-regime protests led by President Alexander Lukashenko. Lakhoika chose Estonia for its favorable business environment, which has favored the startup thus far.

Shortly after arriving in Tallinn, Vocal Image became part of the local accelerator Startup Wise Guys, recognized as a “success story” for its rapid growth. Lakhoika mentioned that the startup reached $6.5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with under $1 million in pre-seed funding.

Recently, the company secured a $3.6 million seed round led by the French edtech VC Educapital, with support from Estonia’s Specialist VC and Germany’s Generations Fund, as reported by TechCrunch.

As of August, the startup announced $12 million in ARR and around 50,000 paying subscribers, according to Lakhoika. With a team of 20, primarily made up of Belarusian expats, Vocal Image aims to grow its development team and add more language options beyond English, including Spanish, German, French, Ukrainian, and Russian.

This recent funding comes just after Vocal Image was selected by Hugging Face, Meta, and Scaleway as one of the top five winners in their European AI Startup Program, at a time when competition is mounting. For instance, the edtech firm Headway recently launched an AI-enhanced speech trainer for its social skills app, Skillsta. Nonetheless, Vocal Image can utilize its GDPR-compliant AI resources.

Processing approximately 35,000 recordings each day, Vocal Image has amassed over 1 million real-voice samples. Even more beneficial, these recordings are annotated by a community feature called Voice Rating, allowing users to evaluate whether others’ voices seem “confident” or “childlike.”

Such a dataset is vital for apps like Vocal Image to boost their effectiveness. It can also help AI startups to refine their synthetic voices, providing extra momentum for the startup beyond its B2C core.