AI, Automation is the future and its initial applications have already left us mesmerized. These technologies will revolutionize many industries, easing the work, and also carve new opportunities each passing day.
VAs (Voice Assistants) have also become one of the most popular and demanded technologies. We are very well aware of Apple’s Siri, Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa, and so on. VAs are becoming a major part of our daily lives, and growing at a tremendous pace. It will not be a surprise if, by 2030, almost 40% of human interactions with devices will be voice-driven!
VAs have entered the consumer side of the market, but what about the commercial side?
Only a few companies are providing VA solutions but only a handful are one of the best in the field.
Kirti Chandel is one of the few businesswomen who is running a leading tech company. She is the CPO (Chief Product Officer) at WooHoo®. WooHoo® is a breakthrough in AI and VA, providing unrivaled solutions to the commercial side, enabling them to achieve faster and efficient automation.
Kirti is an effervescent leader, inspiring women that complex technologies and companies are not a hurdle that a woman entrepreneur cannot conquer. She is a visionary, with a record of exemplary leadership, and expertise. She truly is one of the 10 most inspiring business leaders to watch out for in 2021.
WooHoo®, and What Makes It a Revolution
Voice Assistants (VA’s) have become one of the fastest-growing devices after smartphones. Looking at the phenomenal growth, ‘Voice’ technologies will become a preferred interface for humans to interact within the coming times. VAs are widely adopted by consumers but enterprises do not have many choices. To bridge this gap and provide unmatched solutions, marked the inception of WooHoo® in 2016.
Their base of operations is set up in Silicon Valley, USA. WooHoo® understood the concerns around Conversation Privacy and the inability to customize Voice Assistants to meet enterprise needs. Thus, the journey of WooHoo® started to build the next generation of Voice Assistants for enterprises.
In the last few years, they have won more than 30+ awards, including the prestigious German Design Council award for best product design, CES Las Vegas award for Innovation, Red Herring Top 100 Awards, etc.
Last year with COVID-19, there was a tremendous global demand for contactless technologies which significantly boosted the demand for WooHoo® Voice Technologies. They are experts in providing a contactless interface to operate Room Automations and various voice-controlled operations.
Initial Challenges, and Factors of Success
WooHoo® was founded when the Voice & Artificial Intelligence Technology were relatively nascent. The first challenge was to prove themselves as they were a new product startup focusing on experimental innovative technology.
They also had to deal with a massive shortage of talent, hardware technology, and the market itself. Only in the last 3 years, Voice Solutions Assistants have massively picked up especially in the consumer and smart home space.
Grasping this opportunity, they quickly pivoted into enterprise space and found a huge concern from the customers who liked voice assistants but didn’t want their private conversations to be listened to or recorded. Today, they are one of the leading and trusted partners for some of the largest enterprises that want to voice-enable their offices, hotels, and facilities.
WooHoo®’s exceptional success lies in its amazing team, consisting of out-of-box thinkers, innovators, and creative developers who create products that are breakthrough and future-ready. Also, the clients that put their faith into WooHoo® are equally crucial to their success. Not to forget the Advisors and Investors who brought immense knowledge and experience, especially during these tough situations.
WooHoo® is passionate about the potential and applications of Voice control that bring intelligence, convenience, and safety to our daily lives!
Services offered by WooHoo® and What sets Them Apart
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
WooHoo® is among the very few companies worldwide that design and builds a fully customizable and secure all-in-one Voice Assistant device. Their VA is built in collaboration with HARMAN (a Samsung company). They recently launched the WooHoo® X-Series which features a JBL by HARMAN speaker, a touch-based display, and an HD Video Conferencing Camera.
With a strong focus on Enterprise, they built a solution that delivers on conversation privacy, customization, and an enterprise-based architecture enabling enterprises to mass deploy WooHoo® X-Series Devices whether in Hotel Rooms, Offices, Facilities, etc.
They are one of the pioneers of Voice Assistant solutions in the Enterprise space. This allows them to offer products that are constantly evolving, upgraded, and tailor-fit to the enterprise’s needs.
WooHoo® Voice AI Assistant and technologies are gearing up to innovate the Hospitality, Workplace, and Healthcare industry. They will also be entering the automotive industry, focusing on accurate voice-control in autonomous vehicles.
Besides the enterprise-based features, one of the key differentiators has always been an amazing UX (User Experience). WooHoo® was built by some of the best designers in the world and has won several prestigious awards. Also, the service standards, quality, and assurance by WooHoo® are setting a benchmark for the industry, making their offerings unrivaled in the market!
The Leading Lady, Kirti Chandel
Kirti is redefining the limits for a businesswoman. Her charismatic leadership has propelled WooHoo® to achieve outstanding success and results. She feels that if she can enter such a complex space, and achieve her dreams, so can you!
Kirti inspires and emanates ambition, discipline, and conviction. She not only proves to be one of the most tech-oriented and motivating business leaders but a flawless example of peerless leadership!
She is currently the Chief Product Officer at WooHoo®, based out of Singapore which is their Asia Pacific HQ. At her core, She is an engineer, designer, developer, and innovator. With a Master’s degree in Electronics, she has always been passionate about building both Hardware and Software products. Over the years, she had the opportunity to work in the field of industrial design, hardware, and Software product management and dig deep into Voice AI and NLP.
At WooHoo®, one of her first proud moments was working together with the design team to build WooHoo® X-Series which has won more than 30+ international awards for its design and engineering excellence. She also had an opportunity to travel all around the world, working with WooHoo®’s engineering facilities, partners & customers.
Kirti feels privileged to be part of a small but global community of Women in Voice tech, where she encourages more women to jump into the Voice & AI technologies. She also had the opportunity to speak at the United Nations (UNWTO), VIVATech in Paris, and HITEC in Dubai. She is also a visiting faculty at EAHM, Dubai.
Her current endeavor is with the Singapore Tourism Board to bring contactless and voice technology to Singapore!
Kirti’s views on ‘Innovation is the key to business growth’
When it comes to products, I believe, ‘Innovation is about creating a degree of laziness’. If a product helps you do one less step, there is a high chance people will love it. I also believe Innovation and Design go hand in hand and companies who are not innovative, will not succeed in the long run.
How the Pandemic Affected WooHoo®
Being part of Future tech, the company is propelled by existing investments, but like any other business, they were also impacted by the pandemic. Most of their primary customers are in Hospitality and Workplace. Both these sectors were severely impacted because of COVID-19.
However, like many businesses they used this downtime to understand deeper inherent and future challenges that await the industries, then pivot into solutions that will address the new norm.
While global leaders were trying to make sense of the situation, they saw a big boost in contactless technologies like Voice AI and QR codes were an emerging segment with customers.
The Team of WooHoo®
Working in a future tech startup is not for the faint-hearted. It means leaving the comfort of a corporate job and signing up for long hours, crazy timelines, and being always on the move.
Only those with a never-give-up attitude survive. At WooHoo®, what makes them the best, is the incredible amount of passion and the common belief that the whole team shares. It is their dedication and relentless efforts to build something that will change the world that makes the team one of the best in the field.
WooHoo® has been lucky to get amazing Advisors and Investors who constantly guide and mentor them. The team consists of amazing designers, innovators, and developers, spread across the world but bonded together with one mission and one vision – to make one of the world’s best Voice Assistant products.
To be part of the team that would have its imprint on a product that’s used and loved by people globally. These factors along with the spectacular coordination, and bond between the team, working towards the future, makes the team strive day in and out, to deliver excellence and change the world!
