Speech recognition is hot. In the coming years an enormous growth of the global market in speech and voice recognition is expected. In the Netherlands, several companies are also active in this market. One of them is Scriptix in The Hague. In the series Holland's Finest in the MediaMatters radio show, we spoke with Frans Olsthoorn, CEO and co-founder of Scriptix. "Most solutions in the field of speech recognition are generic, we offer customized solutions."

More and more companies are coming out to focus on speech recognition. "I see new companies popping up all the time," says Frans Olsthoorn. "But there are only a few that build speech recognition models themselves. Scriptix is one of them. Most companies rely on technology developed by others."

Information

Image recognition is usually seen as a bit sexier than speech recognition, Frans says. "But a lot of information can be extracted from speech. You can unlock that information with our software. By converting speech into text, you can use this for subtitling, for example. But you can also make speech and also video searchable this way."

How can a company like Scriptix compete with big boys like and Microsoft (Azure), who are also active in speech recognition? Frans: "I often get that question. You can stay ahead if you really work together with your customers and build customized solutions. Companies like Google and Microsoft have a generic approach. As a result, their software is less reliable in smaller languages like Dutch."

Broadcasters

Scriptix's speech recognition solution is used by regional broadcasters NH Media and Omroep West, among others, for subtitling their videos. But its use is certainly not limited to media. Scriptix is also used for the automatic subtitling of debates in the city councils of The Hague and Utrecht. But there are also applications in education, for example by converting lectures into text and making them searchable.

Scriptix is still a small team of 7 people, but the company does have the ambition to grow, also abroad. The big goal? "We want to become the number 1 in automatic subtitling," says Frans.

The interview with Scriptix is already the second in the series Hollands Finest.

With Holland's Finest, MediaMatters offers a platform for the best Dutch companies in media technology and content production. Next month we'll be focusing on Prepr, a company from Utrecht. On 4 March Jouko Huismans, CEO of Prepr, will be our guest in the radio show.

Listen to the entire interview with Frans Olsthoorn below.