Orai is an AI-powered communication coaching tool, used to improve communication skills.
The company was founded by Tanzanian born Danish Dhamani together with co-founders Paritosh Gupta and Aasim Sani, to address a need in his own life.
“Speech is a fundamental skill,” says Dhamani,“And there’s a lot of research that shows that if you can communicate more effectively, you’re improving your self-worth by 50 percent.”
When Danish Dhamani arrived in the U.S. from Tanzania, he was held back personally and professionally due to poor communication skills. Dhamani started attending Toastmasters meetings to improve his public speaking skills, where he learned to speak better, and now he and cofounder Paritosh Gupta have turned this experience into an app called Orai that serves as a speech coach.
Per the cofounder, if the company can build something that’s truly scalable and accessible to anyone in any part of the world, then it can lead to personal and professional transformation.“I am a big advocate of personalized, one-on-one coaching as well,” he said. “Orai is not replacing that, it’s enhancing that if used together.”
The startup has created iOS and Android smartphone apps to demonstrate the technology, which offer focused lessons and then assess your progress by analyzing recordings of your voice. Similar to Toastmasters,Orai offers a safe environment to practice public speaking in.The real business model involves selling the tools to businesses, which can then assign Orai lessons to salespeople or other teams, create their own lessons and track everyone’s progress.Recently Orai announced that it has raised $2.3 million in seed funding led by Comcast Ventures. The funding will be used to continue development of Orai’s technology, a version of which is available for free in the Android and iOS app stores. In addition to announcing the funding, Orai has signed up famed speaking coach Nancy Duarte as an advisor.