00:02Simon
00:08I'm joined here by Thibaut Dushman, the CEO and founder of Ava Thibaut.
00:13Thank you very much for being with us.
00:16You've been making communication barriers disappear since age 5
00:20and you've got such a wonderful story behind the creation of your company.
00:24So why don't we start there?
00:25Why don't you tell us a little bit about that and the foundation, the very beginning of Ava.
00:28Yeah, so if you saw the Academy Award movie, Coda, it's basically exactly the same story.
00:36I was born in a deaf family, so my parents are deaf, my sister as well,
00:41and I grew up the only hearing person.
00:42And as you can imagine, the world is just not accessible for them.
00:47For them and 450 million people who are deaf or hard of hearing,
00:51they go in social situations, professional situations, school,
00:55and they basically are just like standing there and trying to understand what people are saying.
01:00When you add other people in group conversation, it becomes even harder.
01:03We call it the cocktail party problem.
01:06And it basically, lipreading only covers about 25% of the information.
01:10So with Ava, we build the basically world's fastest and most accurate capturing solution.
01:16We tend to call it the Tesla of captioning.
01:18And what it does is it provides to people 24-7 the easiest solution as a mobile app,
01:24as a desktop app on a computer to really power those conversations
01:28and make them accessible for them as a color-coded transcript that is accurate
01:33and then sometimes intimidated by professionals.
01:36So when you're going to be studying for a class or for something like this,
01:40you need highly accurate captions.
01:42And you're going to be able to use our Scribe service to do that.
01:46And so what's the goal here at Viva Tech 2023?
01:48We know it's been a little bit of an up and down year for tech,
01:51but obviously so much is happening here.
01:53So what would you like to happen for you, for the company,
01:55in the next four days here at the event?
01:58Yeah.
01:59Tech hype comes up and goes away.
02:02But I think this is a millennium problem that we're solving.
02:06For basically millioniums, you have deaf or hard of hearing people
02:09who are basically just excluded from society.
02:11So that means as soon as they're employed or they want to study,
02:15we observe there's like three times less success rates.
02:18We observe there's two times less employment around those kind of disabilities.
02:22So that's basically this wealth gap that we want to cover and bridge
02:27by literally providing easy-to-use solutions
02:29and really unlock the power of this workforce,
02:32of those brilliant students who just only are asking to succeed.
02:35And do you feel that there's even more synergy perhaps this year
02:39with initiatives like the Good Hack,
02:41with a real push from Viva Tech to have more diversity,
02:44more inclusivity?
02:45Because the hard of hearing community would come under those barometers
02:48and we're really seeing people wanting to strive
02:51towards a more inclusive workplace.
02:53Yeah, it started during COVID.
02:55In COVID, everybody experienced this problem, right?
02:58Like the person in front of you had a mask
03:00and you kind of like basically barely understand what's happening.
03:03So I think people developed way more empathy to this problem
03:06that is pretty obvious.
03:07It's why sometimes you turn on captions.
03:09There's a lot of noise in the background.
03:11You might be at an animated social party.
03:14So people have developed that empathy.
03:16But at the same time, I think people also have realized
03:18that tech has the power to really include a lot more people.
03:23And we want to create tech that empowers,
03:25not basically isolates people.
03:28And that's what we're building.
03:29And so far, and I know it's very early in the event,
03:33but what's the interest?
03:35What have you seen from people past this?
03:37Is there more interest?
03:38Is there more strive towards using these kind of tools?
03:42Yeah, we're seeing the industrialization of it.
03:45I mean, literally right now, we have a booth in Viva Tech
03:47with RATP, which is like a subway company in France.
03:51And then they're having those forum discussions
03:53and people can barely hear what's going on
03:55because of all the background conversation noise.
03:58Well, right now, they can see it on the screen,
04:00the captions appearing.
04:01This is just one example.
04:03We have like hundreds and hundreds of companies.
04:05Some are like the largest retailers in the world.
04:08Other people are basically universities, companies,
04:11who are basically just moving and following
04:13as a leading inclusive company.
04:16And this is a movement that is only going to amplify,
04:20especially with 5% of humanity being in this situation.
04:24And that really is asking for a solution
04:26and demanding for it to be in place.
04:28And a final question for me very quickly.
04:31If you were in front of a company that was saying,
04:34you know, why should we provide?
04:35Why should we tap into this workforce?
04:37Because as you're saying, 5% of the population,
04:39so there's a massive workforce out there
04:41and we need to try and get them working
04:42in the best conditions possible.
04:44What would you say to them to try and get them to do that step?
04:47Yeah, and I would say like, look, there's a job gap, right?
04:50Like basically a lot of sectors are massively trying to hire.
04:54And in the same time, there's the question of turnover, right?
04:57Like you have an existing workforce
04:58and then you have those people
05:00that you're paying substantial amount of money,
05:02but you're not really empowering them
05:05to like just be fully productive.
05:07And that is something that now is easy.
05:09It used to be very complicated and expensive
05:11in terms of accessibility solutions.
05:13We actually drastically reduce the cost
05:15by combining basically AI that does part of the work
05:19and in sometimes humans who are going to edit in real-time captions.
05:23And that does massive impact
05:25because if you divide the price by two or three,
05:28suddenly you can empower those kind of use cases
05:30that were not possible before.
05:32Thibaut Duchemin, the CEO and founder of ABBA,
05:35thank you so much for joining us.
05:37ABBA, which built the fastest captioning system
05:40for any conversation.
05:42Back to you guys in the studio.
05:43Thank you, Simon.
05:45And let's go back on set.
05:47Let's meet our next guest.
05:48We'll be right back on set.
05:48We'll be right back on set.
05:48We'll be right back on set.
05:48We'll be right back on set.
05:48We'll be right back on set.
05:48– Sous-titrage FR 2021
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