UNLOCKING THE JOY OF SPEECH

Stamurai is making speech therapy accessible, affordable and high quality.

MEET BRAND STAMURAI 

Stamurai is a mobile app to help learn and practice speech therapy for those who struggle with stammering. The brand has been described as the ‘world’s biggest digital therapy app for stammering’. Stamurai’s Vision and Mission is to make speech therapy affordable and accessible. 

The idea was launched by three Co-founders Anshul Agarwal, Meet Singhal and Harsh Tyagi, all of who are IIT graduates with exposure to the startup space. Sometime in late 2019, the three quit their jobs to start up Stamurai. Fast forward to today, and the app is delivering hope and relief to over 50,000 people spread across 150 countries. The brand has also raised equity funding from an institutional investor. 

THE GENESIS 

Every saga has a beginning, and we are curious about the events that led to Samurai seeing the light of day. “Me and my co-founder Meet both have been Stammering since childhood. I discovered this about 3.5 years ago, a phase when we – Meet, Harsh - our 3rd Co-Founder and myself - were flatmates. This was a bit shocking as I had known Meet for a long time and didn’t realize he had a stammering problem. He told me that he had done extensive self-help during college, and has controlled it to the extent that a normal person would not notice. I learned a few techniques from him and this is when we got the idea of codifying everything”, recounts Anshul Agarwal, Co-Founder. 

CRACKING THE JIGSAW

What is the riddle in its category and space that Stamurai is trying to crack? What is the larger problem it is addressing, in its own unique way? “Traditional speech therapy for stammering is expensive, and one-to-one settings with professionals and therapists can cost around $5,000/yr. Not only that, traditional, treatments carry a 80% relapse rate. Not least, specialized treatments are nearly unavailable. Stamurai is a visionary – and successful – endeavour to address and solve all these challenges through an automated and easy-to-use solution”, explains Meet Singhal, capturing the concept behind their product and the knots in the system it is trying to unravel. 

HEALING STARTS WITH DISRUPTION 

To engineer a therapy experience that delivers real results, Stamurai makes a suite of thoughtful features available to its users. Some of them are :  

1) Customizable tools – including instructional videos - to learn and practice speech therapy exercises, automating large parts of therapy. People come to the video call to practice speaking.

2) AI-based exercises to give real-time feedback to users.

3) The largest community of people who stutter - which acts as a Self-Help support group. 

4) Consultations with speech therapists.

THE FEATHERS IN THE CAP

Stamurai has not only received enthusiastic acceptance across demographics, but accolades from the industry and experts as well. They were rated ‘App of the Day’ and have been featured in multiple categories in multiple countries around the world by App Store. Some of the grants and challenges won by Stamurai are : 

1) Social Alpha Assistive Tech challenge

2) Prosus Social Impact Challenge for Accessibility - 3rd

3) HDFC Smartup grant

4) Medix Digital Health Innovation Challenge India - Runners up 

*This story is published by VOH team*