Winnipeg startup OutreachGenius hears call, answer of artificial intelligence voice agents

The first line under David Owasi’s name on his LinkedIn page says it all: turning missed calls into booked jobs.

Owasi is chief executive officer at OutreachGenius, a startup in Winnipeg’s Exchange District that helps home improvement companies and franchise brands with its team of artificial intelligence “voice agents” that answer calls and book appointments so business owners never have to miss an opportunity.

It’s a service Owasi wishes he’d had access to 10 years ago.

While studying computer science and business at the University of Manitoba, Owasi ran a small house-painting business to support himself. He was often on job sites managing employees, which meant he couldn’t always answer his phone. That led to missed opportunities, he said.

“I was just leaving a lot of money on the table,” said Owasi, 32. “The solution of AI solves that problem.”

Owasi and Pasha Khoshkebari started the company in 2023 after meeting at a Tech Thursdays networking event.

“Very quickly our relationship grew to (us deciding), all right, let’s build this together,” Khoshkebari said.

Khoshkebari was 17 years old and finishing Grade 11 at the time. Now 19, he balances his duties as the company’s chief technology officer with studying software engineering at the University of Waterloo.

OutreachGenius has a few primary objectives, including making AI accessible to businesses of all sizes and offering a quality product that seamlessly integrates into the platforms clients are already using, Owasi said.

Businesses that use OutreachGenius have 3,000 voices to choose from. Beth, for example, speaks with a British accent in a gentle and nurturing tone, while Leo speaks energetically in an Indian accent.

The voice agents were created from an AI model that was trained using millions of hours of audio and millions of kilobytes of text, Khoshkebari said. The voice agents can use phrases that express empathy to better connect with callers and have been programmed to use filler words like “um” to appear more lifelike.

However, the goal is not to trick callers, Owasi said. If a caller asks if they are talking to an AI agent, the voice agent will tell them they are. Often, the voice agent will mention it at the beginning of the call (which is a legal requirement in some U.S. states, according to Owasi).

If the caller asks to speak with a human, the voice agent will connect them to one.

“Disclosing that you’re talking to an AI is very important to us,” Owasi said.

According to OutreachGenius statistics, the company’s voice agents have completed more than three million calls, saving clients more than 37,500 hours. About 50 companies currently use OutreachGenius, including franchise brands with multiple locations.

Creating software that helps people has been Owasi’s goal ever since he learned about Bill Gates. Born and raised in Nigeria, Owasi said it was the Microsoft founder who inspired him to become a software engineer.

Khoshkebari said he’s always enjoyed solving problems, so when he started writing computer code on his first day of Grade 9, he quickly became addicted.

“Since Grade 9, I think I’ve coded every day or every other day — it’s something ridiculous like that,” said Khoshkebari, who was born in Iran and moved with his family to Winnipeg when he was five years old.

OutreachGenius raised US$300,000 in seed funding earlier this year, which will aid Owasi, Khoshkebari and seven employees as they pursue their goal of expanding their client base to 10,000 businesses in the next two years.

Most of that growth will come from franchise networks, Owasi said. “We’re very aggressive and we’re very bullish on this business.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca