How did you and Amir meet and decide to start a company together?

I was living and working in the US until 2004. I then went back to my home country, Iran. Amir was working in a company doing broadcast systems for television at the time. We met when I joined the same company and we started working together. We then both decided to further our studies in Switzerland and join EPFL’s Management of Technology Executive MBA program. We already had an idea and wanted to start our own company, and we realized Switzerland has a wonderful ecosystem for startups, and decided to register our company there. We received a lot of support from canton Vaud in that respect. AVAtronics was officially started in 2016.

Both you and Amir are experts in digital wireless communication. How did you decide to apply that knowledge to the field of acoustics?

It all started because of a flight. We had this long-haul business trip and I’m quite sensitive to noise so I did a bit of research. I had friends that travel a lot who were using noise canceling headphones during flights so I decided to get some. In 2015, the best were supposed to be Bose so I bought two pairs which were quite expensive at the time. The very first time I turned on the noise canceling headphones on the airplane, it was great, I could clearly hear the difference. But then a baby started crying and I could still hear it very well. The noise from the engine was gone, but the baby was still there. I started wondering why noise canceling headphones were canceling only some noise instead of all of it. It didn’t make sense. It should have been doable because in telecommunications much more complex problems were being solved. That’s how we started looking into it and we realized that a broader spectrum can be canceled and there is a really good market for this kind of technology.

What does AVAtronics do?

AVAtronics provides noise cancellation solutions and technology for different industries and applications. One of them is headphones and hearing aids. Anything from in-ear and over-ear headphones to over-the-counter hearing enhancements and hearing aids. Another big industry is transportation where we’re talking about canceling noise through the speakers in the headrest of a seat. That’s everything from automotive to trains and aviation. Our product is an embedded software. It’s not like a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or cloud solution, it needs to sit in hardware and work with sensors. That’s why we partner with different players in the market to incorporate our technology in existing devices.

I listened to some of the noise canceling demos on your website and today, I’ve also had the chance to test your technology in person. I was quite impressed, you can really feel the difference! What makes AVAtronics’ noise canceling solution so much more effective than existing products on the market?

AVAtronics’ technology is made up of a three-step process. The first is characterization. It’s the in-house know-how of the company, the way that we characterize every device and extract the acoustic signature from them. The second step is our embedded software. Because we want to have as many applications as possible, we have developed it with a flexible architecture that can fit into any type of platform we work with. The last step is AI adaptation. The very core of our technology is signal processing, but when you’re moving from one area to another and if the noise changes, the sound profiles also change. However, you can still get the best noise cancellation possible because there are some things that can be traced and enhanced through AI. These three things together are what makes our technology unique.

What is AVAtronics’ business model?

We have a licensing business model. We start with a free proof of concept, we show companies that our technology works and then comes the paid project, when our technology is integrated in the final product. Finally, we establish a licensing agreement through which we charge the manufacturer for the volume of products sold. There is also a service agreement that provides after sales support and potential future software upgrades.

It’s been three years since Verve Ventures first invested in AVAtronics. What are some of the major developments you’ve gone through since then?

We survived COVID quite well which is something to be proud of these days. When we were fundraising before the pandemic, we had some ongoing projects, we had a lot of demos set up. The day that the restrictions hit, we started getting emails from companies putting projects on hold because they didn’t know whether they could continue them. We had all our demonstrations canceled because we couldn’t travel, we couldn’t see people in person. And our technology is something that needs to be demonstrated in person. Everything became uncertain.

What we did was we took one step backwards. We worked on the technology, we tried to add more to the product portfolio, the platforms we were providing and supporting. And that was a really good decision. The AI was something that we added to the system during the pandemic for example. Meanwhile, people started to come back, and a lot of partnerships began to form. It turned out a lot of the acoustics market providers went through a similar situation as us during the pandemic and they were trying to enhance their products, and noise cancellation was something everyone was looking at. We were therefore approached by a lot of different players in the market that wanted to bundle our technology with their product.

How do you go about building your patent portfolio?

We have two patents filed at the moment, one is granted, the second is ongoing. We are filing two more because we want to separate areas that we are working in, the different patterns for each industry. The know-how that cannot be securely protected by patents, we just keep in house as trade secrets. We also prefer to implement our technology on platforms that have encryption, so that they cannot be copied. We try to add as many layers of IP protection as possible.

There is a clear interest from big players in the headphone industry for effective noise cancellation. You are pitching to many of them these days. What are the chances of AVAtronics being bought out at this stage and would you be interested in an early exit?

Amir and I discussed this. We’d like AVAtronics to become as big as possible, we want to become the Dolby Digital of noise cancellation, but on the other hand, an exit to the right buyer at the right price would also be appealing. If we receive an offer, we’ll discuss it with our board and make a decision based on that, but I personally like both options. I’m enjoying what I’m doing right now because it’s versatile. I go on trains and elevators to record noise, I’m showcasing our technology in Korea, my job as a founder is incredibly dynamic which makes it very fulfilling. But everyone in the startup world dreams of a successful exit so I guess we will see what happens when we are faced with such a decision.

How did you wind up showcasing your technology in Korea?

We were here before. AVAtronics was one of the 30 startups that participated in the 2019 Global Startup Exchange and Collaboration Program, organized by the Korean Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the Korea Institute of Startup and Entrepreneurship Development and the Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy and Innovation. The aim of the program was to invite promising international startups to Korea to encourage them to enter the Korean market. During that time, we als stopped by the Swiss Embassy and, after talking to them, they realized they can offer some support in showcasing our technology in Korea.

With the help of Swissnex and the Swiss Embassy’s Science and Technology Office in Seoul, we then applied to the Innosuisse internationalization camp for market validation in Korea and were able to organize today’s technology showcase to key stakeholders. In the upcoming days, we have follow-ups and visits planned to different offices of some of the key players in the hearables market here.

What are the next steps in AVAtronics journey?

We want to get more partnerships going and sign more licensing agreements. Our goal is to establish AVAtronics as the industry standard for noise cancellation. We want our technology to be in every headphone, every over-the-counter hearing enhancement, any environment that benefits from noise cancellation.

A new market we are eager to branch out into has recently opened in the US. It’s called over-the-counter hearing enhancement for moderate hearing loss. Hearing aids are, in general, medical devices. To buy one, you need to do an audiometry test to get a prescription. Hearing aids are very expensive, not to mention ugly. The stigma of wearing a hearing aid can be removed by using earbuds to improve hearing. Our technology could help with that. An app can measure your hearing and adapt in a way that will help you hear better. It gets rid of the noise you don’t want to hear. This way, you can have a more focused one-on-one communication in very crowded areas. It also eliminates the need for audiometry tests. This is a new market everyone in the hearables and hearing aid industries is trying to enter. And this is something AVAtronics could help them do.