Making The Web Talk Over The Phone!

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Innovation Headlines

Innovation

Written by Vandana Sharma

Thursday, 05 March 2009 16:17

We take a closer look at Noddler, a tool that can take the information and services available on the Web to the masses, through a multi-lingual voice interface.

wouldn't it be wonderful if the reservoir of information on the Web could be heard over a phone? Not only would that be convenient for those who are well-versed with computing, but would also empower those with no access to computers, thus bridging the digital divide. Well, Chennai-based Uniphore Software Systems has come up with a solution that promises to do just that.

The company has launched Noddler, a voice application development platform that combines the power of the Web with the pervasiveness of mobile phones. It is an open platform, where any business can develop its own voice services without worrying about hosting the application, or translating the voice service to multiple languages.

A truly open platform
Umesh Sachdev, CEO & co-founder, Uniphore Software Systems, says that Noddler can be leveraged by any business that wants to provide a voice-enabled mobile interface to its customers. "All you need to do is define your service and the way of exchanging data with your database using your own standard APIs (application programming interface) on Noddler's Sandbox interface, and the application will be generated and made live to your customers in multiple languages," he says.

The Sandbox feature of the platform allows businesses to test and improve their applications before making it available to their customers over their dedicated access numbers.

So what makes Noddler unique? Sachdev explains, "Such a solution in the speech space is unheard of in this part of the world. For prospective clients, the entry barrier of the extensive capex (capital expenditure) outlays required to deploy speech solutions, is removed. It lets Web businesses have their own voice interfaces without the worry of issues like hosting, deployment, and a multi-lingual interface." He adds that although there are alternatives offered by telecom VAS (value added services) companies such as Ubona and Onmobile, no one has come out with a platform with an open interface that offers such a hassle-free hosted solution.

The Noddler platform has a pay-per-use structured revenue model for all businesses that use the platform. The company also develops customised speech-enabled systems for clients. For transaction-based services, Noddler takes a pre-defined percentage of the transaction. For other services, the number of calls, or the number of hits, are charged for, according to the pre-defined plan. "In the future, the Noddler platform will also host advertisements, the revenues for which will be shared with those businesses using the platform," says Ravi Saraogi, co-founder and chief operating officer.

An idea based on the needs of rural India
It was mid-2007 when the team began working on the dream of leveraging mobile phones (which have quickly emerged as the most pervasive communication device in rural India) to bridge the information divide. The founders thought that although there was a lot of information and services available on the Internet, the rural populace had no way to access these. Internet connectivity remained scarce and illiteracy was also a big hindrance. One of the solutions thought of was to set up call centres across the country with call agents acting as personal secretaries for all callers from rural India, and catering to all their information and transactional needs. However, doing this for 700 million rural callers wasn't feasible. Thus, the team started working on a model of a virtual personal secretary.

"We wanted to create an automated system that would offer the same utility and experience as a call agent could. We realised that off-the-shelf speech technologies are fairly accurate in English, but when it came to Indian languages and the various dialects, there was a lot of work to be done," says Sachdev.

Saraogi adds: "We built a small team in the RTBI (Rural Technology Business Incubator) and worked on optimising speech technologies for Indian dialects for about eight to nine months. Once we developed the automated voice-based conversation technology to a fair level, we filed a patent for it. In April'08, we formally incorporated Uniphore Software Systems."

Adding voice to applications
Noddler consists of various components, including CTI (computer telephony integration), IVR (interactive voice response), speech recognition, text-to-speech and a lot of software modules that integrate the entire platform with the Web. A number of open source technologies have also been used in the Noddler's Web interfacing components. "The Noddler platform is brimming with state-of-the-art technology. Its intelligent voice response system addresses the traditional problem of traversing through long menus to reach a desired information point. It not only rearranges the services and information according to the caller's profile, but also based on behavioural patterns. It remembers the last interactions made with the caller and keeps learning from it."

Yet the team is not satisfied with Noddler yet-a considerable amount of work is being done to add more functionalities and bring the service to a level where callers virtually cannot distinguish between the experience of interacting with human beings and with the system.

"For starters, we would like to add suitable intelligence to the system to understand callers even better and to be able to customise the service for them in a much better way. There is also an indigenous advertising engine being developed that would provide advertisers with a highly targeted medium for voice-based advertising," adds Saraogi.
Another area that the company is working on is to create an optimised cloud-like hosting infrastructure for speech-enabled services in the country. "We are also looking at collaborations with infrastructure companies that bring in the required expertise and experience for particular components," says Sachdev.

Innovating all the time
Noddler was recently showcased at the Proto.in event held at Bangalore. The company is currently at a phase where it is trying to promote the platform by participating in various conferences and events to spread the word and get the product validated. "One must make good use of such opportunities as these are low-cost ways of getting your product/brand recognised. As with most start-ups, we too don't have a big marketing budget and try to make optimum use of our personal and institutional networks for marketing our product," says Saraogi.

Being a young company, Uniphore dedicates at least 30 per cent of its resources to R&D. The R&D functions in the company include coming up with new functionalities and efficiencies in its existing products and solutions. "Noddler came out of this practice. The most exciting thing that's being worked on is the advertising engine that would be integrated with Noddler," reveals Sachdev.

"Innovation is at the core of whatever we do at Uniphore. Each member in the team is trained and encouraged to think out of the box, while solving technical issues as well as while discussing internal team policies. There is very little value and recognition given to copybook solutions because often they don't fit the scale we operate on."
Sachdev feels that although the innovation eco-system of the country is maturing slowly, a great deal still needs to be done, especially in the case of product companies that go through a longer gestational lifecycle, compared to services-driven organisations. Here, tech-incubators have a major role to play in fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in the country, he feels.

Saraogi seconds the thought, adding: "Business incubation is at a nascent stage in the country, with very few examples of successful ventures being incubated. I feel there needs to be a lot more dedicated effort in promoting entrepreneurship, as this is what will define further growth of the nation."

Looking beyond Noddler...
As regards future plans for growth, the team has clearly defined goals. Sachdev shares them:
"Launching the Noddler platform was a milestone for the company. The roadmap from here on is to promote the platform and to see numerous services being made available on it, so that in turn more and more callers start using it."
The company also plans to continually work on making more services available through its multi-lingual interface so that the rural population has easy access to them. Now, that seems a ‘sound' idea, doesn't it?