Elia - Smart Assistant for English Learning

We are a startup founded exclusively by women holding the top positions CEO and CTO. Our vision is to reduce inequalities by helping people own their English. That's why we created a personal assistant – Elia. Elia is a tool for busy professionals or swamped students struggling with their English.

It connects English learning to their daily activities, e.g. writing an email at work; watching videos on YouTube; or reading an article for a biology class. Because learning that is personalised and in context has been found to be the most effective form of learning. Elia started as a PhD project.

Hence it's based on insights from cognitive linguistics and developed using machine learning and natural language processing techniques. We presented it at conferences in Berkeley and Cambridge. The first demo version of Elia was launched at German universities in January 2022. Currently it has over 1600 users.

We are about to close partnerships with two private language school and two student organisations: ISIC France and Spain. Since January, we have been working on improving the product to reach product-market fit.

We reduced the churn rate (install to uninstall) from 19% to 4% and increased the conversion rate (website to install) from 11% to 24%. Currently, 34% of users would be very disappointed if they could no longer use Elia.

We are on our way to achieving product-market fit.We need the support of this grant, both financial and mentoring, to help us 1) reach the product-market-fit, 2) help us extend our partnerships and user base, 3) buy us time to find a venture capital investor.

According to the Female Startup-Up Funding Index, ""In Austria, 0% of startups who raised money in the first half of 2022 have all-female founding teams and women make up 7% of the 174 founders who received funding."" The numbers are no different elsewhere. Help us change these numbers. We are an all-female founding team.

We could boost the ""0%"" number. But we need your help.