LDC Top 50 2024
Tiku Chauhan and Kavita Parmar
Founders
Word360
In 2013, husband-and-wife team Tiku Chauhan and Kavita Parmar bought a small translation business from Chauhan’s uncle. “It was only turning over £600,000,” says Chauhan. Optometrist Parmar leveraged her clinical experience to make Word360 a vital partner to customers across health and social care, becoming a technologist along the way.
“We saw that automation would be key,” she says. “We built our own software from scratch that is ‘like Uber’ for interpreters.” Today, Word360 has a national network of 15,000 linguists and covers 450 languages. From the emergency room to GP practices, it provides language support to patients when they need it most. “We’re tackling health inequality,” she says.
What we do every day matters. We are tackling health inequity on the ground.”
Q&A
What was the toughest time while growing Word360?
Kavita: Our system offered remote communication via telephone and video and, during the Covid-19 pandemic, this became a game-changer for customers who wanted remote service solutions. We won a lot of big contracts but our system wasn’t built to handle those volumes. We had to rebuild it quickly to handle the sudden increase in demand. Our system, Wordskii, now offers access to professional and reliable language support at anytime, anywhere.
What are your international ambitions?
Tiku: We have always wanted to grow sustainably, so we focused on the West Midlands to ensure we understood the needs of our customers. We wanted to get our customer service absolutely right before widening the net. But now we have become one of the largest suppliers of interpreting and communication services across the UK, and we’re attracting international clients. We’re growing revenues by 30% a year and I expect us to become even more global by the end of 2024.
Where does your ambition come from?
Tiku: We are both from migrant families. My dad was one of four brothers and all started their own businesses. Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs who had to work for everything they had, that’s been a big influence on me.
What impact does this business make?
Kavita: What we do every day matters. We provide support to the patient going into the delivery room and help people communicate about their trauma. We are tackling health inequity on the ground and are part of that front line service. We don’t take that lightly and understand that our responsibility goes beyond language, we’re also helping to mobilise disadvantaged communities and embed them into society.
