Kara Technologies is a New Zealand impact startup building a more equitable and accessible global communications system for the deaf community using digital humans — avatars with high-fidelity faces and emotional expressions. The company uses motion capture technology to produce easily comprehensible, fast on-demand Auslan (Australian sign language) for preparedness and emergency situations. Kara piloted the technology alongside Deaf Communities and the Australian Red Cross’ Emergency Services team. The recent grant will bolster efforts to provide emergency preparedness activities in Auslan via digital human avatars. Kara was part of the Startmate program and, 12 months ago, raised NZ$1.3 million in a Seed round led by Sydney VC Investible. Humanitech Lab, which invested in Kara, is a mentoring and investment program backed by the Telstra Foundation focused on technological innovation for humanitarian and social issues. Kara Technologies builds digital human avatars that translate text into sign language using proprietary Motion Capture (MoCap) and automated translation to deliver high-fidelity faces and emotional expressions. Their self-developed MoCap technology cleans up dimensional errors and maps motions onto avatars of different proportions in real time, improving accuracy and comprehensibility for Deaf audiences. The company has targeted validated niches such as emergency-services mass alerts in the U.S., deploying avatars that translate pre-scripted text into sign language and supporting vocabulary development. Kara reports keystone partnerships with blue-chip tech and media businesses as traction evidence and emphasizes co-design with the Deaf community. The founders include CEO Dr Arash Tayebi, COO Dr Sahar Izadi, CTO Farmehr Farhour, and CBO Ken Erskine, whose backgrounds span engineering, research, software, and marketing. Future plans include building a plug-in for real-time content translation across video-conferencing platforms and social media to scale sign-language accessibility and replace closed captions over time.

Total raised

$1M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Grant

Latest activity

Oct 2023