Backpacking to an unfamiliar part of the world can be tough and makes communication difficult. You might be having apps like Google Translator, Microsoft Translator, but you need to be connected to the smartphone, breaking eye contact often with the person while interacting. Seems awkward, isn’t it?
‘Travis Touch‘ claims the struggle of communicating a foreign language will soon be a thing of the past. The Dutch pocket translator manufacturer from Rotterdam has already been in news for manufacturing translation devices to effectively communicate face-to-face with other nationalities. By integrating the best translation engines and conversation-enhancing functionalities, Travis removes the communication barriers for people who travel across the globe.
Recently our founder, Remco Janssen got an opportunity to meet Lennart Van Der Ziel, founder of Travis at Emerce eDay Scale-up Cafe held in Amsterdam.
Do check out the Digital Waves video below, to take a look at the full interview. Story continues below.
Catering B2B markets!
As scheduled, the company launched Travis Touch 2.0 this summer in a magnificent way. Till now, we have concentrated majorly on the B2C markets and sold around 120,000 devices, but, moving onward, we are planning to cater to B2B markets especially in three sectors. Lennart Van Der Ziel said, “We are planning to focus on three markets – medical, retail and tourism-based in the Benelux region.”
What is Travis all about?
According to Lennart, he said, “We facilitate bilingual communication with our own hardware and software.” Travis Touch is a handheld pocket translator with main improvements in hardware and usability over its predecessor. He added, the device is built solely for an occasion – face-to-face conversation, having said that there would be a little lag time of around one to two seconds.
Talking about its functionality, Van Der Ziel added, “We have offline languages, but it’s not on par to the online functionalities that we provide currently. I always recommend using a SIM card or Wi-Fi for that matter. However, this will change soon since we are progressing and pushing updates to over 120,000 devices as fast as we can worldwide.”
104 languages!
At this point, Travis offers translation in 104 languages of which the majority is a speech-to-speech (74 languages) translation. The Rotterdam-based company is working on adding and digitizing languages right now to its database.
Talking about B2B, Van Der Ziel said, ” The works have been started already, where we are doing a 30 paid pilots with B2B organisations along with hospitals, the Dutch army, police departments, and corporate organisations.”He also added that the company sort of moving towards a service platform with a fixed monthly fee.
Till now the company has raised around €2.3 million in two campaigns, a part of which is a production cost. “We’re now at 23 people in the Travis company and 10 people, including volunteers in the tribe’s foundation.” As quoted by Van Der Ziel, The company is planning to raise €2.5 million equity funding around 2019, where a part of capital will be used for R&D department.
Road Ahead!
The company aims to sell 5 million Travis in 2022, creating a hotspot of understanding. According to Van Der Ziel, “We are really focusing on the coming six months where we want to have success in the B2B approach. So having those 10,000 units per month that we can sell and then getting the big investment round is considerable. Also, we want to make the world a better place by connecting people.”
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