<article>Language-learning mobile application <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/elsa/">ELSA</a> has secured a Pre-A round of $3.2 million led by <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/monk%E2%80%99s-hill-ventures/">Monk’s Hill Ventures</a> for talent acquisition and technology development.</article>

Language-learning mobile application <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/elsa/">ELSA</a> has secured a Pre-A round of $3.2 million led by <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/monk%E2%80%99s-hill-ventures/">Monk’s Hill Ventures</a> for talent acquisition and technology development.
The deal, according to an official statement, will see Monk Hill’s Managing Partner, Peng T Ong, join ELSA’s board.
ELSA, which stands for English Language Speech Assistant, is a mobile app that uses artificial intelligence and speech recognition technology to help learners improve their English pronunciation. It works by listening to the way language learners pronounce words, sentences or conversations to identify errors and provide real-time, accurate feedback on their pronunciation mistakes with specific suggestions on how to improve. The app claims to have 1.5 billion users worldwide.
&#8220;We’ve built a very large speech corpus of non-native speakers from around the world learning English. With this very valuable data set that we’ve collected and trained over the past few years, we continuously improve our advanced pronunciation assessment engine using state-of-the-art speech recognition and deep learning technologies,&#8221; said ELSA co-founder and CEO Vu Van.
The San Fransisco-based startup said that the funds will be used to hire top-tier talent to develop new AI capabilities, open its voice recognition API, and expand its speech recognition technology to teach new languages beyond American English.
Furthermore, the company will create a platform to support English teachers and schools around the world to integrate ELSA into their curriculum and help students with their speaking skills.
&#8220;We are pleased to support ELSA’s team of experts in the fields of AI and speech recognition as they scale their technology to new languages and markets. ELSA has achieved exceptional organic growth over the past two years and we’re excited to help grow their business and partnership efforts in 2018 and beyond,&#8221; said Ong.
ELSA is backed by investors including <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/500-startups/">500 Startups</a>, and belongs to the StartX Fall 2015 group, an accelerator for Stanford’s top entrepreneurs.
In its latest publicly known funding, Monk&#8217;s Hill, which invests in high-growth, post-seed stage technology startups in Southeast Asia, led a Series A financing round of $3.1 million into Singapore’s <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/horangi-cybersecurity/">Horangi Cybersecurity</a> last year.
The Singapore and Jakarta-based venture capital firm recently announced the appointment of Mohd Ridzwan (Reez) Nordin from Malaysia’s <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/khazanah-nasional/">Khazanah Nasional </a>as a venture partner in Kuala Lumpur.
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ELSA is a mobile app that uses artificial intelligence and speech recognition technology to help learners improve their English pronunciation.

Monk’s Hill Ventures leads $3.2m round in language app ELSA

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Monk’s Hill Ventures leads $3.2m round in language app ELSA

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