Double win for language firm at Tech Awards 2022
More and more now we’re seeing tech accepted by women as an industry to go into. Kavita Parmar
AFIRM which provides interpreting and translation services in more than 350 languages to clients has been named a double winner at our West Midlands Tech Awards 2022.
Word360 was crowned top Established Tech Business, which was open to companies at least five years old and which had shown exceptional performance, while co-founder Kavita Parmar was named West Midlands Woman in Tech.
She launched the Birminghambased business in 2013 with her husband Tiku Chauhan, with Kavita focusing on growth and innovation and Tiku handling operations.
The company works with public, private and not-for-profit organisations to help them deliver access to their services through its own tech platform ‘Wordskii’.
Word360’s network of selfemployed interpreters can help clients with translation services at any time and anywhere, either in-person or via video or telephone.
It is used by multiple sectors but the team has focused on health and social care and especially supporting local communities and people from disadvantaged and hard-to-reach backgrounds which proved invaluable for healthcare clients during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Its client roster includes the NHS, National Lottery, children’s charity Barnardo’s and budget retailer B&M.
Kavita started her working life as an optometrist and then in 2009 created e-commerce site Adaptawear which was an adaptive clothing line for elderly people.
After selling this in 2013, she saw an opportunity within the language sector to develop technology that would enable patients in healthcare settings to communicate in any language at any time.
Speaking after the award ceremony, Ms Parmar said the company had started out with just four staff but had now grown to 45, with plans to target new markets outside of its core UK function in Europe, the US and Canada.
“Our community is full of talented, native speakers – in Birmingham alone we delivered 147 languages last year which is a reflection on how diverse the community is,” she said.
“It’s actually a very easy profession to get into as most of the people speak their native language and also English so they can go on our training programme and learn how to be an interpreter.
“For some of our contracts our interpreters are based in other countries and we have clients in the US, Africa and India.
“There is so much potential to expand the company, the world is globalising and everybody wants services in their local language and that is not just in healthcare but across all industries now.
“As you get new migrants and more displaced people, there are languages which become more prevalent. Ukrainian is a really good example of that, something we had never really delivered before but in the past 12 months it has become one of our top languages.”
Reflecting on the gender balance in the tech industry, she said Word360 actually had a majority female workforce but acknowledged this was very much an exception.
“More and more now we’re seeing tech accepted by women as an industry to go into,” she added.
“There is a tide of change and the industry is becoming more interesting and attractive to women and so it’s really for them to embrace that as opposed to looking at other options because it can be a very successful career.
“Women tend to stick to what they know so it’s about encouraging them to try it and get involved in the opportunities that are out there.”
The Awards are run by our sister websites BirminghamLive and CoventryLive in partnership with BusinessLive and celebrate achievement by individuals and employers across ten different categories.