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Interactio picks £21M, London VC Eight Roads Ventures leads investment in Baltics’ largest ever Series A

Interactio
Image credits: Interactio

Vilnius-based Interactio, a Remote Interpretation Platform, provides remote participation for multilingual online and onsite meetings. The company just announced that it scored $30 million (nearly £21 million) in a Series A funding round.

Investment from London VC!

This investment round is one of the largest Series A rounds in the Baltics. The round was led by Eight Roads Ventures, a global VC based in London that has backed Alibaba, AppsFlyer, and Neo4j among other portfolio companies, and Silicon Valley-based Storm Ventures that has backed Pipedrive and TalkDesk. The others that took part in the funding round are Practica Capital, Notion Capital, Change Ventures, and renowned angels, including Jaan Tallinn, one of the co-founders of Skype, and Young Sohn, ex-Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung.

Interactio will use the funds to support the exponential growth that it witnessed during the pandemic, which has accelerated the demand for Remote Interpretation Platforms. The additional capital will allow the company to further scale its team to support growth. Interactio also intends to hire in Lithuania, all over Europe, and in the US. it plans to invest in remote interpreter tools to make a top-notch experience for both interpreters and event participants.

“Our vision is to break down language barriers and make professional interpretation available to everyone. It has been fantastic to support the world’s leading institutions and enterprises to operate on a full hybrid or remote basis”, said Interactio CEO and co-founder, Henrikas Urbonas.

“Interactio is a disruptor in a multi-billion dollar market, dominated by services-based incumbents that have remained undisrupted for the last decades. With its innovative product, this team is revolutionising how language interpretation is being used by global businesses and institutions. We have known Henrikas and his team for many years and have been impressed by what they have achieved so far. We are excited to support the team in building this new category of Remote Interpretation Platforms.” explained Lucile Cornet, Partner at Eight Roads.

“Storm Ventures is thrilled to partner with Interactio and join their journey as they disrupt the archaic 30+ year old live-translation space. In a world where teams are increasingly distributed across the globe amongst many languages, institutions and corporations alike need new tools to sustain smooth and efficient communication. The team at Interactio has embraced this new demand and is positioned to dominate the new remote/hybrid translation space.” said Pascale Diaine, Partner at Silicon Valley-based Storm Ventures.

Massive growth during pandemic

It works with the world’s largest institutions, including European Parliament, European Commission, United Nations, and corporates such as BMW, JP Morgan, and Microsoft to provide real-time multilingual interpretation services for remote or hybrid meetings. The platforms allow to host participants and interpreters who can either be in the room or remote. With Covid being a catalyst, Interactio grew 12-fold between 2019 and 2020. The company hosted 18,000+ meetings with 390,000 listeners in 2020 in over 70 countries.

“Since the pandemic hit the world, the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission had to go online for meetings with interpretation. Thanks to its performance, user-friendliness, and straightforward hybrid integration into our a/v infrastructure, Interactio became a platform of choice.” – states Frederic Pirotte, from the European Commission.

Reduces carbon emissions

Interactio was established in 2014 by Henrikas Urbonas, Simona Andrijauskaite, and Domas Labokas. Previously, interpretation was seen as a hassle for event organisers. It required the installation of soundproof booths, interpreters flying to the venue, and the distribution of expensive audio equipment for participants. This Lithuanian company reinvents interpretation by simplifying the process and allowing organisers and attendees to focus on what matters most.

Participants and interpreters can join and listen to the meeting in their preferred language from any device sitting anywhere in the world. Eventually, this reduces costs, carbon emissions, and the burden on the event organisers.

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