Kibo, Featured In Shark Tank India Enables Specially-Abled People To Learn with Artificial Intelligence

Kibo, a company that uses technology to help people with disabilities, language barriers, and literacy challenges in education and work. Kibo uses AI-powered solutions for tasks like listening, translation, and making printed or digital content into audio across many languages. These tools are focused on languages that are not usually given much attention, like those from India, Africa, and Asia. Kibo’s aim is to assist schools, colleges, NGOs, and workplaces to be more inclusive.

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Kibo’s story began when its founders, Akshita Sachdeva and Bonny Dave, were in engineering school. Akshita worked on special gloves for visually impaired people, incorporating obstacle sensors and a camera to help with reading. Bonny, on the other hand, noticed the challenges of heavy braille books and high costs, so he created a refreshable braille device. Combining these ideas led to the birth of Kibo. The company offers services in 60 languages, including twelve Indian languages, provides translation, recognizes handwritten text, and converts text into audio files with precise pronunciation for different languages.

Initially, the co-founders proposed to invest Rs. 60 lakhs for a 1% stake, valuing the company at Rs. 60 crores. However, Peyush Bansal, CEO of Lenskart, and Ronnie Screwvala, co-founder of upGrad, combined their offer to invest Rs. 60 lakhs for a 10% stake. Aman Gupta, CMO and co-founder of boAt, initially offered Rs. 60 lakhs for a 4% stake, but later reduced it to 3%. After several rounds of negotiations and counter-offers, the deal was finalized with Peyush and Ronnie investing Rs. 60 lakhs for a 6% stake. The co-founders were thrilled to discover that their vision of reaching every school, college, and library in both India and abroad with Kibo aligned with the sharks’ vision. Securing the deal was a positive experience for the co-founders, giving them an optimistic outlook for their company, as stated by Akshita.

Kibo has successfully secured a total of $4.75 million in funding through one round. The most recent funding round, a Series A round, took place on August 14, 2014, resulting in an investment of $4.75 million.

Institutional investors are big organizations that invest money into companies. These organizations often have a lot of money and they use it to buy ownership in businesses and make money from their investments. In the case of Kibo, a company, there are two institutional investors: Vista Equity Partners and Bialla Venture Partners. This means that these two big investment organizations have put money into Kibo, likely in exchange for a share of ownership in the company.

As of December 21st, Kibo has a total of 280 employees. This represents an increase of 8.5% compared to the employee count in December 2020.

Kibo is part of a group of 3421 competitors. Among these competitors, Kibo holds the position of 119th. Out of all the competitors, 377 have received funding, and 213 have exited the market. Together, Kibo and its competitors have gathered more than $14.5 billion in funding through 1230 investment rounds with the help of 3572 investors. Within this group, there are 11 private unicorns, 22 publicly traded companies, and 191 acquired firms.

• For comparison, Shiprocket was founded in 2012, based in Gurugram, India, and is currently at the Series E stage. It is a unicorn company with a total funding of $353 million from 12 funding rounds.
• BigCommerce, founded in 2009, is located in Austin, United States, and is a public company. It has raised $233 million in funding from 6 funding rounds.
• Bazaarvoice, also founded in 2005 and located in Austin, United States, has been acquired. It has raised $20.4 million in funding from 6 funding rounds.

The overall ranking of these companies among their competitors is as follows: Kibo ranks 119th, Shiprocket ranks 1st, BigCommerce ranks 2nd, and Bazaarvoice ranks 3rd.

Aspiring entrepreneurs from across India come to Shark Tank India to present their innovative ideas and business models, hoping to secure the investment needed to take their startups to the next level.