A firm which provides interpreting and translation services in more than 350 languages and dialects to clients across the region and beyond was 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 had shown exceptional performance, while co-founder Kavita Parmar was named West Midlands Woman in Tech (scroll down for the full list of winners).
She launched the Birmingham-based business in 2013 with her husband Tiku Chauhan, with Kavita focussing 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 self-employed 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, Kavita 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 within the sector.
"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 West Midlands Tech Awards are run by BirminghamLive and CoventryLive in partnership with BusinessLive and celebrate achievement by individuals and employers across ten different categories.
Among the other winners were Jon Bould, a project co-ordinator and design engineer with Wolverhampton cyber security firm Goldilock, who won the Young Tech Talent award, while female-led market research agency Flume took home the Professional Services Tech category.
BirminghamLive editor Graeme Brown said: "Congratulations to all of our winners at the 2022 tech awards and of course Word360 for its double win.
"The judges were impressed with how the company is using new technology to solve what is very much an age-old problem - how do we break down language barriers and improve our communication?
"We saw during the pandemic the vital role that technology played in keeping us all connected and, in many cases, helping companies stay afloat and people remain in jobs.
"I know from reading your entries the West Midlands tech and digital sector is continuing to uphold its now burgeoning reputation as an epicentre of this thriving industry and long may that continue. So well done to all and I can only wish the very best of luck in your future endeavours."
The awards ceremony was held at Millennium Point in Birmingham and was hosted by Birmingham-born magician Ben Hanlin.
Our headline sponsor was Coventry-based IT services and consultancy firm Kagool and our category sponsors were law firm Mills & Reeve and pension administration tech firm Delta Financial Systems.
The full list of 2022 winners and sponsors is:
Young Tech Talent, sponsored by Delta Financial Systems
Jon Bould, Goldilock
Digital Start-up
Doji
Innovation in Education, sponsored by Kagool
Mindsafe Digital
Property and Construction Tech
EcRoFit
Professional Services Tech
Flume Group
Scale-up Business
Redbrain
West Midlands Woman in Tech, sponsored by Mills & Reeve
Kavita Parmar, Word360
Digital Development Team
Genba Digital
Tech Collaboration
Aspire Active Education Group and miMove
Established Tech Business
Word360
