Joseph Zirah, the quiet achiever
Without boasting or false modesty, Joseph Zirah is riding a wave of success that has made him one of the key players in innovation in Languedoc-Roussillon. Portrait of a pure product of Montpellier's educational system.
He is not the type to look back, but there is no doubt that Joseph Zirah will long remember his meeting with Pierre Moscovici one day in September 2012. While visiting the region, the Minister of Economy stopped in Lavérune to salute the success of a regional flagship, ESII, during a visit and a handshake with its founder. A former student of ISIM (formerly Polytech), Joseph Zirah has been running this SME specializing in reception management since the early 1980s. His job is to design high-tech reception management solutions for public institutions and the commercial world, such as the smart single checkout line and the connected card for high-end stores. He is proud to have propelled his company to become one of the world leaders in the sector thanks to tools such as the "patient journey," a system designed to optimize case tracking that has been adopted by the largest hospitals in Paris. The success story could have ended there. But that was without counting on the inventiveness of this engineer, who worked at Alcatel Paris before embarking on his entrepreneurial adventure. At an age when some people are thinking about retirement, Joseph Zirah is launching a new line of business with Twavox, which he describes as "software providing access to culture for people with disabilities."
Carbon paper
It must be said that this subject is close to his heart. Suffering from progressive deafness since the age of two, Joseph Zirah has spent his entire life struggling with a world that was not made for him. Even in college, at a time when the word "accessibility" was just a vague concept, he had to rely on carbon copies from one of his classmates. And work hard. His scribe at the time, Jean-Pierre Richard, has since become a friend and partner at ESII. Twavox was born out of an observation: "Every time I went to the movies, I had trouble hearing all the dialogue. There are magnetic loop systems to compensate for this, but they are more or less effective depending on where you are in the theater, and disruptions are very common," he says . One evening, frustration got the better of him and Joseph Zirah set out to find a mobile app on the internet.
Wi-Fi
"I thought that in today's connected world, there had to be a solution. But then I realized that there wasn't one..." A stranger to the world of cinema but sensing the opportunity presented by the new generation of mobile phones, he decided to set his R&D department a new challenge. The success was as bold as the idea itself. Launched in 2014, his patented device and accompanying app immediately attracted groups such as Gaumont and Pathé. The principle is disarmingly simple: use the Wi-Fi band to transmit sound to a simple smartphone and a pair of headphones, thus avoiding any interference. Two other features complete the device: audio description and subtitles. "And we can go much further," enthuses Joseph Zirah, who is now targeting the conference and education market. In April, the president of ESII returned to Polytech to attend the installation of the Twavox box in a lecture hall. It was symbolic. Forty years later, Joseph Zirah has his revenge on carbon paper.