Chatterbox - shaking up the labour market
by Startacus Admin
Innovative language learning startup Chatterbox using its platform to help marginalised professionals connect with businesses and find new opportunities in the online economy.
When refugees arrive in another country, it often doesn’t matter how highly skilled or qualified they are; if they don’t speak that country’s language well, they struggle to get work that fits those skills and qualifications. Meanwhile, the increase in work from home jobs means that more businesses are getting employees from all over the world instead of only their local area, meaning that there can be a language barrier there too. Things like war, famine and, increasingly, climate change will only increase the number of displaced people with great talent and nowhere to use it.
London/Lisbon-based language learning startup Chatterbox is addressing this with their platform to connect marginalised professionals with businesses. As the startup puts it, they help them ‘find opportunities in the online economy, whilst at the same time helping global brands build the diverse globally distributed teams that will lead to post-pandemic success’.
The startup began as a language school to help Syrian refugees get back into work in their new locations, in large part by teaching Arabic. From there, they have grown into something larger, helping more people from a wider range of backgrounds, bringing onboard clients such as the British Red Cross and Unilever.
The platform combines live language classes with native-speaking teachers and AI-powered self-learning, leaning towards business vocabulary to help with fluency in a corporate environment. The goal of the platform is not to make everyone speak the language of the business, but to help all employees speak the languages of their clients and coworkers, meaning that the aforementioned refugees and marginalised workers are not only learning from the platform, but are also the ones teaching.
In March, Chatterbox raised £1.5 million in a pre-seed round led by GMG Ventures, with participation from All Turtles, Mustard Seed Maze, RLC Ventures, and SoftBank. This comes after an initial £230,000 round back in 2019.
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Published on: 4th April 2022
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