Kavita Parmar and Tiku Chauhan - founders of Word360 - have been recognised as one of The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2024, in partnership with The Times.
Created by trusted investment partner LDC – part of Lloyds Banking Group, The Top 50 celebrates entrepreneurs demonstrating remarkable ambition, and is now in its seventh year.
This year the programme received more than 700 nominations showcasing the exceptional individuals building successful and growing businesses right across the UK.
The business leaders featured in The LDC Top 50 for 2024 are making a real impact by creating jobs, promoting social equality, championing sustainability, expanding internationally and integrating purpose into their business practices. They operate from 39 towns and cities across the UK and span every sector of the economy, whilst collectively employing 5,146 people and generating revenues of more than £1.1bn.
Word360 was recognised as an industry leader delivering tech-enabled interpreting and translation services.
The Birmingham-based company was recognised for making an impact in health and social care and for their work as a vital partner to public sector organisations such as the NHS and local councils. Word360 provides language support to patients 24 hours a day, either in person or virtually, with the help of 15,000 freelance translators across the UK covering 450 languages and dialects. The Word360 team have built its own tech platform, Wordskii, to seamlessly match clients to the right interpreters.
Chauhan and Parmar acquired the firm from Chauhan’s uncle in 2013. The married couple both wanted to run their own business and felt Word360 had huge potential. At the time, it had one NHS contract, five staff and an annual turnover of £600,000. Now it is one of the largest suppliers of translators and interpreters in the UK. The couple expect to secure their first global customer by the end of the year.
CEO of Word 360 Tiku said: “It’s a real honour to be recognised by LDC and The Times. We launched the company just over 10 years ago as a husband-and-wife team delivering a translation service for the digital era. Now we have become one of the largest suppliers of interpreting and communication services to the NHS across the UK. We’re growing revenues by over 30% a year and I expect us to become even more global by the end of 2024.”
The couple bought the business as a going concern in 2012, with Kavita Chauhan (then an optometrist) leveraging her clinical experience to make Word360 a vital partner to customers across health and social care. Whilst she had no experience developing technology, she took a leap of faith to change their service offering into a digital solution.
Kavita - now chief commercial officer, said: “I saw that automation would be key and we developed our own software from scratch to create an Uber style service for interpreters. The transition from optometrist to a woman in tech has been a huge learning curve, but a fulfilling one.”
Today, Word360 is an industry leader delivering tech-enabled interpreting and translation services through a national network of 15,000 linguists covering 450 languages and dialects. From the delivery suite to GP practices, it provides language support to patients when they need it most.
Kavita said: “We’re supporting marginalised communities by tackling health inequality. In effect driving social mobility by delivering effective communication at the point of need.”
John Garner, managing partner at LDC, said: “It’s been seven years since we launched The LDC Top 50 and in that time we’ve had the privilege of meeting some truly remarkable people. Our business leaders for 2024 show relentless drive and determination in their growth ambitions, and I’d like to congratulate them on everything they’ve achieved so far. This is certainly not the end of their success and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.”
