Voice biometrics startup Minds Digital raises Seed funding, aims for large companies

Brazilian voice biometrics developer Minds Digital has closed a BRL 1.5 million (roughly US$305,000) Seed funding round by BR Angels.

Talking to Startups, the company said it intends to use the funds to grow its product, commercial and marketing areas, as well as using BR Angels’ network of contacts to open doors with corporate clients in areas such as finance, telecom and retail.

More broadly, Minds Digital said its ultimate goal is to get large companies to use the firm’s voice biometrics-powered identification and authentication solution in their service channels, including call centers, apps and messaging apps.

“This year our goal is to introduce our technology to eight to ten large enterprise customers and arrive in December with 1 billion requests on the platform – currently we have 300 million,” Minds CEO Marcelo Peixoto told Startups.

“We want to increase the security of transactions that can be done in real time through WhatsApp, Apps, and both human and digital customer service channels, enabling authentication and validation with voice biometrics,” Peixoto told Biometric Update in an email.

“So our planning for this fund raising is to grow the teams of marketing, product and sales. Also BrAngels was the right decision because they have a smart network that will boost our sales process and to make our product scales fast in the market.”

Alongside the investment, Minds has also announced the availability of three different products: Minds for WhatsApp, Minds for App and Minds for Call Center.

“Call centers are a big focus for us. In the pandemic there was an explosion in the use of these channels, as well as a boom in data leaks and fraud cases,” Peixoto says, according to Startups.

“As a result, a more effective way to stop these failures was sought, and voice authentication is an alternative.”

Minds’ new biometric products are currently in the process of being finalized, following trials with Banco BMG.

When asked his thoughts on the voice biometrics market in the EU, Peixoto said the technology is already used in some sectors such as finance, but it still has great potential, especially in neighboring countries.

“We hope, in the near future, to scale our product throughout the national market and prepare an expansion in Latin America and the USA.”

Minds is not the only company in the voice recognition space working on biometric identification for call centers. Nuance, Pindrop, and Veridas are all pushing the boundaries of these applications further, at a time of substantial growth for the global voice biometrics market.

This post was updated at 10:27pm Eastern on June 15, 2022 with additional comments from Marcelo Peixoto.

Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  Brazil  |  call centers  |  enterprise  |  funding  |  investment  |  Minds Digital  |  research and development  |  voice biometrics