Dare To Change

Bronze Award – SpeakAble HK

SpeakAble HK is a startup revolutionising Cantonese speech therapy home practices through our AI-powered gamified platform, "Parrot PiPi". In Hong Kong, over 40,000 children with speech impairments face a 1.7-year public waitlist and expensive private sessions ($130+ USD/session), causing regression between infrequent treatments.

To solve this, SpeakAble leverages proprietary zero-shot voice cloning to recreate a familiar parent’s voice, triggering mirror neurones to boost engagement. Paired with clinical-grade subphonemic analysis, we provide accurate, real-time pronunciation feedback, turning stressful at-home practice into independent playtime.

Our "Clinical Moat" is driven by our founders' on-the-ground expertise in speech pathology (HKU) and special education (EdUHK).

Operating as a B2B SaaS, we target schools and NGOs. Crucially, our platform is fully covered by the Education Bureau's inclusive education subsidies, ensuring zero out-of-pocket costs for schools. With an immediate serviceable market of $2.5M USD, a Techathon Gold Prize, and university-backed pilots launching in July 2026, we are raising a $50,000 USD seed round to scale R&D and finalise B2B partnerships．

For more information, please contact dare.to.change@ydc.org.hk

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