Two graduates of Luxembourg’s young enterprise project are expanding Talkii, their alternative communication tool for people on the autism spectrum.
Gianluca Marinelli’s career outlook changed forever when he participated in the Jonk Entrepreneuren Luxembourg young enterprise project in 2018. “It opened a door I never thought possible,” the entrepreneur tells Silicon Luxembourg.
Just 25 at the time, the Luxembourger with Italian roots was studying at the Luxembourg school of sales and management. He says that he probably would have taken the conventional “office and suit path” had he not met business partner Alessio Weber and participated in the YEP.
Marinelli’s idea was to create an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tool for people on the autism spectrum.
“My girlfriend has two brothers who are both non-verbal. I saw that they communicated using paper pictograms. My idea was to digitalise those pictograms and give them something more modern and fun to use,” he says.
The two launched the Talkii app in Luxembourg in 2020, where it is currently subsidised by national health insurance, under certain conditions. Accounts can be shared across devices or locations, allowing users to create separate profiles for school or therapy, a flexibility which led to one partner dubbing Talkii “the Nextflix of AAC”.
“Google has never developed a text to speech in Luxembourgish.”
Gianluca Marinelli
What is more, last week, 10,000 more pictograms were added to the app and the two entrepreneurs are exploring ways to integrate a Luxembourgish text to speech feature, in partnership with the Lëtzebuerger Online Dictionnaire.
“Google has never developed a text to speech in Luxembourgish. That’s why it’s a solution that’s not optimal for the moment,” Marinelli says. However, the two have developed a short-term fix: a voice recording feature where friends and family can record and add audio themselves.
Marinelli reckons that Talkii is a “gamechanger” for parents and people on the autism spectrum. “It means less conflict and frustration. It makes them feel better understood. At the same time, parents don’t have to download, print, cut out and plastify pictograms.”
In terms of his career, the technology startup has been transformational. After the JEP, the two participated in Fit 4 Start, the Impuls programme with Nyuko and pitched a project for a Covid-inspired app to help intubated patients, which is currently on hold.
Thanks to the support received from these programmes, notably from mentor Annica Törneryd, the two have developed a business development plan focusing on expanding into Italy and Brazil. “After that we want to target Germany and Austria,” says Marinelli.
When not working on the startup, the entrepreneur takes time to give back. He returns to his business school twice a year to share his story in the hope that it will inspire others to ditch the “office and suit path” and become entrepreneurs.
