Hasler Foundation supports IT start-up Geneemo with CHF150'000

Geneemo allows to stage text by adding expressions, emotions and characters to synthesized or natural voices. It provides innovative technology that bridges the gap between machine generated and human voices, opening up a new portfolio of applications from automatic dubbing of movies to giving real voices to speech generating machines used by persons with speech impairments.

Presented at the beginning under the name of “EmoGen”, when it won the International Create Challenge 2012, the project Geneemo now convinced the jury of the Hasler Foundation of its potential. Via its start-up support, the Foundation takes a financial stake in start-up companies which demonstrate particular innovative strength in the field of information and communication technology (ICT). It thereby plays an active role in ensuring that Switzerland continues to take a leading position in science and technology in the future.

Lakshmi Saheer, scientific collaborator at the Idiap Research Institute and founder of Geneemo, sees the Hasler Foundation’s support as another important step in the lifecycle of her venture:

"Hasler Innovation project funding is a big step for Geneemo giving a great confidence boost and growth opportunity. This funding will facilitate accelerated growth for the company. The project will aim to have a faster streamlined technical development with complete focus on the product & customers including early customer acquisition. Funding from a reputed institution like Hasler further provides better visibility, trust and credibility for Geneemo with potential customers, partners and investors. This will be a strong base for the establishment of the next generation speech technology company."