ELSA (‘English Language Speech Assistant’) is an English learning app to improve speech and pronunciation using AI and voice recognition. Today, ELSA has almost 6 million downloads around the world in 101 countries.

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The concept of ELSA started when co-Founder Vu Van was studying at Stanford. While studying at university, her fellow classmates had trouble understanding her even though she was highly proficient in English. She realized the issue was her accent.

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She dug deeper and realized a strong accent that may not be fully understood by an English speaker can impact one’s confidence. This challenge can also discourage speaking and further learning. Equally, if not more harmful, a strong accent can also create wage disparities and mistrusts in the workplace. Unsatisfied with the only solution she found - one-on-one accent coaches - she set out to solve this huge problem using tech and ELSA was conceived.