Media Localizer Take 1 to Acquire Transcription Provider Verb8tm

On December 7, 2021, localization and access services provider Take 1 announced its upcoming acquisition of US-based transcription and captioning company Verb8tm. The deal is expected to close on December 31, 2021.

Louise Tapia, CEO of Take 1, told Slator that the two businesses have known each other for more than a decade having been “introduced through a mutual client in the US.” She said Take 1 and Verb8tm collaborated on transcription and translation projects in the past and hold common values relating to quality and technology integration.

Tapia declined to disclose financial metrics surrounding the transaction and revenues for Verb8tm, but said “Take 1 is acquiring a selection of Verb8tm’s clients and proprietary technology, including their transcription software and internal management system.”

Take 1 generated revenues of GBP 3.7m (USD 4.6m) in 2020. Verb8tm has around 50 staff members and Tapia added, “We’re taking on [Verb8tm’s] full staff contingent, but Verb8tm will retain their brand.”

According to Tapia, Verb8tm’s current CEO, Doug Haigh, and Co-founder, Ellyn Sheffield, will leave the business to pursue other opportunities. “Verb8tm’s key management team will assume responsibility for operations across part of Take 1’s business in the US and all other Verb8tm staff have been offered positions at Take 1,” she said.

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In addition to Take 1’s base in the UK, the company has been operating in the Americas for the past decade, where clients include household names such as NBC Universal, ITV America, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic.

Take 1 has US offices in Connecticut and Los Angeles, as well as in Santiago, Chile. Their Americas teams include account managers and sales team members, as well as localization and technology-support professionals.

Take 1 was founded in 1998 and works with media and entertainment clients including production companies and localization vendors, and provides localization, transcription, captioning, and audio description service to its customers. Technology provider OOONA announced Take 1 had integrated its online subtitling and captioning solution, OOONA Tools, in 2020.

Verb8tm works with clients in the education, legal, and corporate sectors, as well as US news institutions. It was founded in 2007 under a different name and initially provided access services to the public radio market before commercializing a few years later.

Verb8tm will expand Take 1’s presence in the US and provide the business with speech recognition (ASR) technology to support human-in-the-loop transcription workflows. Verb8tm has also developed cloud-based transcription and production management software for transcription and captioning workflows.

“The opportunity to acquire Verb8tm arose on the back of Take 1’s recent growth and aggressive expansion in access and localization services,” Tapia said.