Member Article

Behind the business with VoxSciences

Formed in 2008, VoxSciences is a voice recognition technology solutions company offering Voice- to-Text services to both B2B and B2C audiences. VoxSciences is continually developing a portfolio of solutions that utilise voice recognition technology, providing users with convenient unified communications management services.

Ken Blackman and Tushar Joshi founded the organisation following the successful sale of Puma Unified Communications Ltd. to J2, a NASDAQ listed company, based in Hollywood.

What key challenges has your company recently faced?

VoxSciences has been established since 2008 in the UK voice-to-text space. We’re extremely proud of our successful B2B deployments, which we are continually developing however, 2012 has seen the dawn of a new era for the organisation as we wanted to develop the B2C aspect of the business, whilst profitability maintaining our existing partnerships. Last month saw the launch of not only our first direct-to-consumer proposition, but also the first, free UK voicemail-to-text app.

What is your biggest achievement over the past 12 months?

VoxSciences has been diligently working to achieve numerous successes over the preceding 12 months, however I think everyone within the organisation would agree that without doubt our greatest achievement was creating, architecting, writing and releasing our first direct-to-consumer, voicemail-to-text apps in order to establish and enhance our B2C presence in the UK. As with most technical developments we’ve had our challenges, most notably we underestimated the timescales involved due to the complexity of the task and the hurdles to clear for approval.

What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

Without doubt our vision for 2012/2013 is to capitalise on the great response we have received to the launch of our voicemail-to-text applications. We anticipate continued, significant growth, which presents infrastructure, support and cultural challenges for our young company. Probably the greatest challenge we face over the next 12 months is to profitably grow our existing B2B portfolio whilst ensuring the embryonic B2C side of the business receives the attention it requires. I believe that this is a challenge most start-up organisations face with the limited resources we have at our disposal, however we are a committed and talented team who are definitely up for the challenge.

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

There are many pieces of advice that can be, and are regularly given to ‘Entrepreneurs’ therefore it is difficult to choose just one. In my opinion the main thing that has allowed VoxSciences to have the successes it has and allowed the organisation to enjoy continuous grow would be to believe in your business plan, while remaining at all times customer focused. I would also add that you should surround yourself with the best people you can afford and be tenacious. Make sure that you have sufficient funds to see you through to positive cash flow; it is extremely hard to obtain debt financing at the moment and equity financing can be very expensive for early stage companies, particularly, in the current telecommunications sector.

Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in this region or generally and where your organisation sits within it?

There is a renaissance occurring within the start-up tech / entrepreneurial environment currently with many new entrants every day therefore the landscape is continually evolving. VoxSciences are experiencing healthy growth due to our commitment to innovation and our ability to adapt, however I believe we are somewhat sheltered from the rest of the UK economy as we are seen as somewhat disruptive. We have, without doubt, benefited from the continual development of enabling technologies such as the Smartphone, allowing us to bring our services directly to the end user with our voicemail-to-text applications, which are viewed as productivity enhancers which are not only in vogue but historically have done well in times of recession.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jane Goodayle .