On Thursday, MG Motor India selected Voxomos as the third start-up under its MG Developer Program & Grant initiative, started last year to promote smart technologies within India. Voxomos, founded by IIT graduates, offers a suite comprising neural text-to-speech (Indian languages and accents), speech-to-text, voice biometrics as well as natural language understanding and conversational AI. Going forward, Voxomos’s AI platform can enable voice-related capabilities for MG Motor in India. “Voice technology is the future, and Voxomos’s solutions can find relevance both in the field of connected cars and at various back-end processes at MG,” says Gaurav Gupta, chief commercial officer, MG Motor India.
Voice is also the next revolution in the automotive sector as it is changing the whole paradigm of user interface in vehicles. Already, the Hector and ZS EV, the company’s cars in India, use i-SMART connected car technology that, among other things, gets voice control by Nuance Communications, an American MNC. “We will mentor Voxomos, and eventually try and give their solution a more commercial aspect and industry usage,” adds Gupta.Voxomos CEO Sandeep Kumar, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur, says that they have built speech technologies from scratch, and these are tailored for the Indian context. “We are working in the lingo of most urban Indians, i.e. Hinglish (mix of Hindi and English), and will work on regional languages as well,” he says.
Now, after getting the MG grant, Kumar believes Voxomos can scale up faster. He also feels that the current voice commands used in MG India cars need indigenisation. “We will discuss this further with them (MG),” he says. And while Voxomos is open to talking to other car companies, Kumar says that because MG Motor India was the first to recognise them, if there is an opportunity with MG, “we will give them priority.” The carmaker had earlier shortlisted Driftly Electric (a smart EV charging solutions provider) and Innvolution Healthcare (a player in the field of ventilators) under its Developer Program & Grant initiative.
