One97 Communications, Nuance Team To Deliver Speech-Based Apps

One97 Communications, a telecom application platform and services company, has announced its association with Nuance Communications, a provider of speech and imaging solutions globally for businesses and consumers, to take speech-based applications to the masses.

Automatic, speech recognition-based applications will enable both telecom operators and enterprises to establish a better connection with their customers by leveraging One97’s experience. The new application will ensure product delivery for rural and semi-urban markets, where users have not yet been able to achieve benefits of value-added services due to lower literacy levels and linguistic barriers.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, managing director, One97 Communications, said, “Voice is the preferred application interface for Indian mobile consumers. As the voice application and platform leader, having Nuance’s speech skills will be a great asset for us to build compelling consumer experiences. Together, we will be able to address Indian consumers in not just 28 languages, but also in thousands of dialects.”

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He further added, “Natural speech, which was earlier restricted to high-end applications or users, will now reach out to every mobile consumer and create a compelling value proposition for our operator and enterprise partners.”

Sunny Rao, managing director, India and South East Asia, Nuance Communications, said, “We are very pleased to collaborate with One97 to deliver a voice-enabled application to improve services to customers in one of the world’s largest mobile markets. The new application based on our speech recognition technology will enable customers to access services in a far more user-friendly manner with more freedom of choice. Nuance wants to enable rural consumers to overcome low literacy levels and access value-added services. Our partnership with One97 is an important step in that direction.”

With this partnership, the One97 Communications platform, which currently supports 28 Indian regional languages, will get the boost to support numerous dialects too. The new applications, which One97 plans to deploy, will provide the company a tremendous opportunity to tap into the unexplored semi-urban and rural markets, which are expected to be future growth drivers. The new speech-based applications on the One97 Communications platform will offer a host of speech-based niche and mass services, which will be the first of their kind.

One97’s platform offers lower cost of servicing customers and will enable telecom operators to handle a higher number of calls with more types of queries being addressed. The new application is expected to be disruptive for the industry as it is neither a traditional customer care application nor is the customer required to pay for accessing the service. This speech application service will enable service providers to reach out to a much wider audience than before.

Speech-based applications and services will help telecom carriers to get more customers to explore and use their (new) services and also reduce call drops while accessing services. These applications can be customised as per the user profile and activity depending upon the lifecycle stage. This will offer telecom operators a huge opportunity to make offers to their customers based on their preferences, through a process where customers can dial a number and simply state what they are looking for. For those, who cannot read or write, the speech-based option works best.