Our Story


how our personal journey lead to speech buds

It was a chilly Saturday afternoon in New Jersey. I think it was November of 2017. We had a regular physical appointment for my younger son who was a few months over 2 years. He is a happy active baby like a lot of other toddlers at his age. Extremely alert, and full of life. While going through his physical checkup, which came out all great, our doctor started to ask questions about how well is he using his words- such as, Is he putting 2 or more words together to form a sentence ? She asked a few questions to our son to try and gauge his comprehension skills. That's when she raised a 'minor' concern.


She recommended that we should contact Individualized Education Program (IEP) and have them come over to conduct an evaluation. Even though she did not make it sound too bad, but as a parent I started to freak out (probably normal for every toddler's mom). Technically, this was when my journey in the field of speech therapy started. The coming years would see me and my husband sit through numerous Speech and Language Therapist (SLP) evaluations and speech therapy sessions with many therapists and my toddler. I have to say, at times it was painful. I remember one evaluation where me and my toddler had to sit in a small closed room for 2 hours and the therapist was required to do certain activities with the kid to try and gauge their expression abilities.


I will just pause here. Let that sink in. A 2 year old, who can not stay still for more than 5 minutes, was supposed to follow a structured assessment for two hours in an environment he has never been before! Like I said earlier, it was painful. It started off well, but soon there were tantrums. Lot of crying and fidgeting. I felt bad for the therapist who was trying to do her best to keep my kid engaged. And naturally, mid way through the session , we both (parents) knew that our child wasn't answering questions to the best of his abilities. More importantly, we both knew that the scores that therapists was noting down were getting more and more incorrect. But I was told that's the process and we have to follow that.


Fast forward a couple of years. We engaged with a lot of private speech therapists and the experience started improving. My son started to slowly make progress. I am forever amazed at the level of patience that SLPs have and how they work methodically and tactfully with children. As a parent, I just wished that SLPs had more "fun" tools to keep kids engaged and that they had more advanced ways of tracking progress which in-turn helps anxious parents like us be more relaxed about the whole speech therapy process and the progress of our dear child.

Given, that I was mom who has spent my last 17 years making software technology tools, I felt I owed to the world to help make something that could make the speech therapy journey and experience easier for kids, parents and SLPs. We are in this together!

I could write about all the big software tech that was used to make this app, but I won't. I could write about all the Ph.D.s, data scientists, voice engineers, SLPs, parents, children (yes, we needed them help us locate voice samples that will resemble how children speak!)- but then, it takes a village to raise a child!

So, what has all that help gotten us to?

It has helped us develop an app, SpeechBuds, which utilized a lot of that grit, to help solve the following purposes:

  • Use SpeechBuds app to detect speech issues in children. Often it's the lack information that blind sides us and the delay in getting help can have a monumental effect.

  • Use SpeechBuds to play back a recording and listen first-hand how the child is improving.

  • Use SpeechBuds to grade an assessment

  • Use Speechbuds to see visual charts giving a birds-eye view on how your child is progressing

  • More importantly, use SpeechBuds app to take an assessment at the comfort of your home anytime you want.

If you want to learn more about it, take it for a spin. Use it and if you have other brilliant ideas to contribute to it, please call me with your suggestions. Because just like a lot of brilliance was used to create SpeechBuds, your use of this app, and feedback thereupon can help take the product further.


Ashita Kachru | Co-Founder