The global translation service market, valued at around $40 billion, has a significant gap when it comes to person-to-person translation. While apps like Google Translate and Apple Translate dominate the consumer space, they don't support calls or voice messages. EzDubs, a Y Combinator-backed startup, is addressing this issue with its innovative app that offers real-time translation for calls, voice messages, and text in over 30 languages.

Founded in 2023 by Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, Amrutavarsh Kinagi, and Kareem Nassar, EzDubs has its roots in a project that read lips and translated speech into text for people with hearing loss. The trio later worked on video dubbing and eventually developed a translation tool. After enrolling in Y Combinator's 2023 batch, they officially started building EzDubs.

The company's journey began with a Twitter/X bot that translated clips posted on the platform, which gained over 340,000 followers and received more than 500 dub requests per day. In July 2023, they launched a WhatsApp bot that allowed users to translate voice messages and videos. However, the process was cumbersome, and users had to forward voice messages to the bot, get the reply translated, and send it back to the original sender. To simplify this process, EzDubs decided to build its app, releasing an early version this year.

The EzDubs app, available on iOS and Android, offers real-time translation for calls with support for 30 languages. Users can call someone who speaks another language and get an instant translation, without the need for the other person to have the app. The app also supports translation for text, voice, and video messages. Users can share translated voice or video messages outside the app with a link, but the founders believe that for those who communicate in multiple languages, platforms like WhatsApp and iMessage don't serve the purpose.

EzDubs has seen significant traction, with users making hundreds of calls per day, averaging 17 minutes per call. The top use cases include people dating across cultures and professionals trying to communicate with locals while staying abroad. The startup's technology is built around two models: one for voice cloning while keeping emotions intact, and another for translation. The translation model handles interruptions and doesn't wait for someone to finish a whole sentence to start translating internally.

EzDubs has raised $4.2 million in seed funding led by Venture Highway, with participation from Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman, Replit CEO Amjad Masad, Applied Intuition's CEO Qasar Younis, and Replicate's CEO Ben Firshman. Friedman believes that EzDubs is on the path to making translation tools easily accessible to users, given the founders' rich history in speech and language learning.

"Access to high-quality translators has been limited to corporates and government entities. EzDubs is trying to democratize access to this service through its app," Friedman told TechCrunch. He added that even within companies, there are language barriers to communicating efficiently, and EzDubs can remove that.

In the coming months, EzDubs plans to launch a feature that allows users to scan a QR code and initiate an EzDubs call instantly without downloading the app. The startup eventually wants to make EzDubs a default phone calling app, enabling it to handle incoming calls as well. Additionally, EzDubs is building an extension for apps like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Slack, further expanding its reach.

With its innovative approach to person-to-person translation, EzDubs is poised to disrupt the $40 billion global translation service market and bridge the communication gap between people from different linguistic backgrounds.