Founders Arash Tayebi, Sahar Izadi, Farmehr Farhour, Ken Erskine

CEO Arash Tayebi

Sector Deep Tech, Emergency Services

Two years ago, Arash, the co-founder of Kara Tech, lost his hearing in his left ear. This was the beginning of his journey to investigate and understand the issues facing the Deaf community.

On his journey, he found that there was a huge accessibility gap of content for the community. With more than 70 million Deaf people in the world who do not have proper access to education and other services, Kara Technologies aims to reduce these accessibility issues. 

The technology provides accessibility to public information using sign language by using artificial intelligence (AI) to power a digital human called Niki. Niki is a hyper-realistic avatar who can translate a variety of media content such as video, audio, or text into New Zealand Sign Language.

Check out the demo of their hyper-realistic signing avatar, Nikki, here: