While artificial intelligence is still in its infancy in Southeast Asia, it has the potential to significantly boost the region’s economy. The legislative promises made by SEA governments and growth of investors’ interest in AI driven startups led to an explosion of AI based startups. This also indicates the region’s readiness for Industry 4.0, which is defined by the digitization of industry and its enhancement via data and machine learning. Many startups are actively taking steps towards building AI driven businesses, powering local, regional and global activities.

In this article, to provide an insight into emerging AI driven businesses in the SEA region, we’ll share a list of 10 prominent AI driven startups. The details are shared below:

1. Sertis: Sertis Corporation is a data science and big data analytics firm based in Bangkok, Thailand. It delivers AI and data analytics services to businesses in areas such as retail, telecom, aviation, and healthcare. The startup already has strong ties with Google, Microsoft, and AWS. In 2019, Sertis launched “Sertis Face Scan”, a cutting-edge AI-powered face recognition technology, at Kuching and Senai International Airports in Malaysia. Sertis’ data scientists, analysts, and engineers help companies use AI and big data to solve business problems. They use data analytics, computer vision and face recognition, blockchain, geographical data, and natural language processing to improve consumer interactions. 
2. Blue Monkey: Blue Monkey, founded in 2019 by Tom de Geytere and Han-Ley Tang, utilises AI and machine learning to help organisations improve operations and operate more effectively. This start-up uses AI and machine learning to automate monotonous processes, enabling businesses to concentrate on more important duties like governance and planning. Blue Monkey’s Skynet quotation system leverages AI and ML to function as an aftermarket parts supplier. Blue Monkey’s solutions are powered by Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Textract, AWS Lambda, and Amazon Simple Storage Services (S3). 
3. Leena AI: Leena AI is an autonomous conversational artificial intelligence platform that assists organisations in improving the employee experience. Companies can eliminate the need for human resources personnel to perform tasks such as answering policy-related questions, knowledge management, generating employee documents on demand, and managing employee tickets, allowing them to devote their time and resources to higher-value activities instead. A total of 20+ platforms, including SAP SuccessFactors, ADP, Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Office 2013, are supported by Leena AI; Many large scale corporations such as Nestle, Puma, AirAsia, Coca-Cola, Lafarge Holcim, and Abbott have been using the startup’s services. 
4. Kata.ai: Kata.ai is an Indonesian artificial intelligence business focusing on dialogue. The firm was previously created in 2015 as YesBoss, a virtual assistant service via SMS and smartphone app. In 2016, the firm redirected its efforts and established Kata.ai to provide a natural language interaction engine for organisations to utilise machine-learning chatbots. The promise of Kata.ai resides in the premise that developing engaging encounters with consumers using conversational AI technology can lead to higher sales, stronger customer service, and more successful marketing campaigns. Kata.ai aggregates data from its partners—many of which are commonly-used social and messaging applications such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, BBM, LINE, and Slack—to help companies better understand their customers’ behaviours. Kata.ai’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) AI technology feeds multi-purpose chatbots for large Indonesian firms of diverse sectors, including fast-moving consumer products, banking & financial services, telecommunications, and retail. 
5. ViSenze: ViSenze, founded in 2012 in Singapore, produces visual search and picture recognition technologies to assist businesses in providing superior customer experiences and increasing sales. It offers picture search capabilities, a recommendation engine for visually comparable goods, and automatic product labelling. ViSenze focuses on retail and ecommerce, and our vision-based artificial intelligence (AI) solutions solve product search and recommendation use cases for retailers, brands, and marketplaces. Each month, ViSenze generates over 500 million visual product searches for over 900 brands and retailers worldwide. Additionally, we are the only visual AI business that powers the “visual shopping lens” natively incorporated into the cameras of five major original equipment manufacturers — Samsung, Huawei, Vivo, Oppo, and LG – reaching over 350 million mobile users worldwide. ViSenze is built almost entirely on AWS cloud infrastructure, using Amazon S3 for all data storage and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for large-scale deployment, among other AWS services. 
6. Crayon Data: Crayon Data, founded in 2012 and headquartered in Singapore, is one of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing AI-based firms. Crayon Data’s flagship product, maya.ai, is an AI-powered decision engine that leverages insight into individual preferences to improve the personalization of digital experiences for consumers of all sizes. The Maya platform analyses the preferences, behaviours, influences, and technological environments of each individual consumer in order to capture their time and attention in a variety of businesses. The choice engine, which is powered by Crayon’s TasteGraph, Choice AI, and Lifestyle Marketplace, is capable of increasing spend by 3-7 percent, engaging inactive consumers, and reducing cycle time by discovering successful merchants within a week. Crayon Data has been recognised and awarded by a number of worldwide platforms, including IBM Watson, TiEcon, Gartner, Intech50, and OrangeFab. 
7. FraudLabs Pro: FraudLabs is a Southeast Asian AI business that helps retailers safeguard their online storefronts against fraudulent consumers and transactions. The Malaysian business uses AI to analyse transaction characteristics and detect fraud in real time. In order to approve, examine, or deny purchases, the fraud-detecting engine assesses each transaction’s risk. FraudLabs Pro inspects over 50 aspects of each purchase in milliseconds and collects data on fraud trends for each item the merchant authorises, rejects, or blacklists. Validating IP addresses, billing and shipping information, user accounts, credit cards, transaction velocity, devices used to make transactions, and email addresses are critical components in detecting fraud. The worldwide merchant community contributes millions of prohibited crimes to FraudLabs Pro. In order to safeguard organisations from online fraud and acquire additional data for their AI-powered detection system, FraudLabs Pro provides a free package. 
8. Inmagine Group: Headquartered in Malaysia, this is the business behind stock picture website 123RF. It released Designs.ai, an AI-powered platform for producing videos, mock-ups, designs, and logos, in 2018 as part of an effort to capture a piece of the creative cloud market. Inmagine started in 2000 as a source of premium stock images and has since grown into a creative ecosystem including a variety of creative assets and business methods. Today, Inmagine is on a mission to make design accessible to everyone by using artificial intelligence and data analytics to streamline all aspects of the creative process. Inmagine’s predictive recommendation engine is designed to provide accurate recommendations based on the brief’s critical criteria, such as colour, font, content, and style preferences. It creates appropriate design recommendations that may be utilised as completed designs in their own right or as a starting point for the designer’s subsequent creative elaboration. 
9. Supahands: Supahands was established in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in the year 2014. It collaborates with some of the most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) businesses in the world, streamlining processes by merging in-house technology with its 3,000-strong staff of remote taskers and other remote workers. Supahands, with its hybrid human intelligence-machine technology, is a leader in the preparation of clean and accurate datasets for use in artificial intelligence and machine learning training. To date, Supahands has helped organisations such as Axiata, Media Prima, Rakuten Viki, and iBotta with their business operations.
10. KoinWorks: KoinWorks is a Peer to Peer (P2P) Fintech business in Indonesia. It is the first Indonesian P2P Lending enterprise to be registered under and overseen by the Indonesian Financial Services Authority. KoinWorks offers a machine learning-based online platform to bring in Lenders and Borrowers together on which both parties may complete their requirements whether to make optimum returns on a monthly basis or to receive accessible and reasonable online loans. 

Conclusion

Southeast Asia’s retail, agricultural, financial services, transportation, healthcare, and education sectors are all seeing an increase in the application of artificial intelligence. Financial transactions, consumer interactions, new approaches to human navigation in physical environments, and even the diagnosis of critical medical conditions are all being helped by advanced machine learning algorithms. In the ASEAN area, the lightning-quick development of autonomous systems has not gone ignored because of the market’s rapid shift. The Southeast Asian market, starting with the listed AI-based firms, is sharper and more personalized than ever before. All these advancements in such a short period of time makes the SEA region perfect for exploring opportunities in the AI domain. Startups should make use of this emerging trend in their own sector and leverage it accordingly.