Meet the former Microsoft reseller boss revolutionising life for people with hearing loss
Dan Scarfe, chief executive of Xrai Glass, has big things planned for his AR technology which allows deaf and hard of hearing people to experience real-time conversations via smart glasses
It was following a family Christmas get together two years ago that XRAI Glass was conceived, after co-founder and CEO Dan Scarfe (pictured) saw his 97-year-old grandfather struggling to feel part of the celebrations.
Scarfe's reseller business New Signature was acquired by Cognizant in 2021, and he was on gardening leave at the time of his family festive gettogether. He noticed his grandfather was not engaged in any conversations despite having hearing aids, and said he experienced an epiphany moment when he realised how his relative's demeanour changed when watching TV with subtitles.
"I thought, why not combine augmented reality glasses with AI subtitles so deaf and hard of hearing people can be a part of the conversations around them?" he explained.
XRAI Glass was incorporated in May 2022 with seven founding members, including channel veteran Mitchell Feldman, founder of many channel businesses including TIG UK and RedPixie, which was acquired by HPE in 2018. The company's chief brand ambassador Jacqui Press was born profoundly deaf and has years of experience in helping the deaf community, and the other founders have years of software engineering and industry experience between them.
"Both Mitchell and I sold our businesses which were life changing events, and we were looking at what to do next," Scarfe explained. "We knew we wanted to help people and put our skills to good use."
Since its launch, the company has already bagged several major awards, including Startup Tech Company of the Year at the National Technology Awards, and the Technology for Good Award at the Global Business Tech Awards. It has also appeared on numerous TV programmes including the BBC's The One Show and CNN.
The market is sizeable. According to the World Health Organisation more than 1.5 billion people live with hearing loss, almost 20 per cent of the global population.
Scarfe said there are many new developments to come for the technology, which already works in 76 languages and over 140 dialects. The glasses plug into a smartphone and work via a downloaded app. See the technology in action in this video.
"We have thousands of users already, but it is still very early days," he explained. "The AR market in general is still very nascent and there are still barriers to entry like phone compatibility, plus the fact that a lot of the glasses are shaded and they still have wires. It reminds me a little of the cloud market when we first started selling cloud as a concept - We seemed to be constantly apologising for it - but look at it now! There are glasses being released that have no wire and clear lenses - we are riding what is going to be the next big wave."
Where next for XRAI Glass?
"We have launched two major new releases this year as part of XRAI Glass 2nd Edition." Scarfe explained.
"An AI assistant to answer questions and summarise conversations, and also XRAI Stream, which we believe will be a game changer for people and for businesses. The quality of transcription is only as good as the audio, and while we have spent months optimising this, we still struggle in places such as train platforms that have public announcements. With XRAI Stream we are going to be working with transportation providers, hospitals, theatres - places where anyone who is deaf or hard of hearing might go to in their daily lives, and they will be able to get real time updates in whatever language they need."
He added that the firm is already working with channel partners, and sees the technology as something that resellers can sell to any of their customers that have an address system or who run events that can be live-streamed via XRAI Stream.
"Between 10 and 30 per cent of people attending events are unable to properly understand the content, but they don't like to draw attention to it," Scarfe said.
"This technology can be easily deployed without making a fuss or causing embarrassment and we have also factored in good margins for selling the technology via partners."