#65 Media Loc’s Most Powerful CEO, KUDO Series A, Babylon Health’s Michela Simonelli

Babylon Health Content Design and Localization Lead, Michela Simonelli, joins the pod to talk about hyper-local digital content, localizing high-touch health materials, and the growing telehealth market.

Michela shares her professional journey prior to Babylon Health, which saw her spend 11 years “agency-side” in multiple language service providers (LSPs). 

Michela discusses how content design interacts with localization at the digital health provider and collaborating across functions with epidemiologists, internationalization teams, and data scientists.

She also broaches the subject of machine translation (MT), explains why there is currently no interpreting provision for medical appointments, and identifies an opportunity for LSPs that can provide a holistic service for telehealth.

First up, Florian and Esther discuss two M&A and funding stories in the media localization space.

Private equity-backed Iyuno completed its acquisition of major rival SDI Media to become Iyuno-SDI Group, the largest pure-play media localization company globally, with combined revenues of around USD 400m in 2020. 

A few days later, UK-based ZOO Digital raised GBP 7.4m (USD 10.3m) in a share placement on the London Stock Exchange. The publicly-traded company said it plans to spend the proceeds on building hubs in India and Southeast Asia, expanding international business development, and on “longer range” R&D.

Florian shares news from multilingual video conference startup KUDO, which secured an additional USD 21m in a Series A round, bringing total funds raised to USD 28m.

On the flipside, he talks about a survey conducted by the Belgian Chamber of Translators and Interpreters (CBTI-BKVT), which revealed that conference interpreters in the country saw their income decline by about 50% following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.