Speech translation startup EzDubs has raised USD 4.2m in a seed round, coinciding with the out-of-beta launch of an app that translates calls in real time.
Rahul Garg and ex-WhatsApp CBO Neeraj Arora, both with Venture Highway, led the round, with participation from Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman, Replit’s Amjad Masad and Michele Catasta, autonomous vehicle software company Applied Intuition’s Qasar Younis, and Ben Firshman of cloud startup Replicate.
As TechCrunch reported, EzDubs builds on two models: one model for voice cloning and maintaining emotions; and a second model for translation, which can manage interruptions and can start translating internally before a speaker finishes their sentence. The app currently supports 20 source languages and 34 target languages.
EzDubs can also handle multiple languages within one conversation, with users forming groups and each participant using their preferred language. The stated target audience ranges from people dating across cultures to professionals communicating with locals while abroad.
While the company launched an early version of the app in 2024, EzDubs started with a bot on WhatsApp in July 2023. Users would forward a voice message or video to the bot, which would translate the audio or text, and then send the translated audio or text to their correspondent. (The company now maintains a similar bot on X.)
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EzDubs said that hundreds of calls are placed each day, with an average call time of 17 minutes. The app also transcribes and has plugins for video conferencing and team messaging platforms such as Zoom, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.
Co-founders Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy and Amrutavarsh Kinagi met at college in Hong Kong. During the 2019 protests, neither student could understand local news or government updates in Cantonese, which inspired the pair to develop a universal translator.
Krishnamurthy and Kinagi both continued their studies at Columbia University, in New York, where they continued working on their idea. During an internship at Cisco, Krishnamurthy met the company’s first investor, and later cofounder and now-CTO Kareem Nassar, who had led Cisco’s speech AI group.
Jared Friedman, the Y Combinator partner, told TechCrunch that EzDubs plans to expand its offerings to include translation tools.
Building on the existing app, the company will also integrate a feature so users can scan a QR code to initiate an EzDubs call, without downloading the app. Beyond that, EzDubs wants to make its app a default phone calling app so it can handle incoming calls.
