This Botswana-based AI startup is looking to revolutionise marketing in Africa. Here is how they plan to do it

The rise in recognition of OpenAI’s conversational AI chatbot, ChatGPT, has seen the doorway into mainstream tradition of shopper dealing with AI instruments. DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are another common instruments.

In Africa, nonetheless, innovation round generative AI merchandise has not develop into obvious. This doesn’t imply that there is no exercise in the AI area on the continent. Seipone.ai is a Botswana based mostly AI startup which is constructing an enterprise software-as-a-service product which seeks to revolutionise the best way manufacturers perceive their prospects.

Initially based in 2018 as “Seriti Insights” which was a software program consultancy agency, Seipone.ai made a full pivot to AI in April 2022, deciding to focus completely on its enterprise AI SaaS product. This transfer is additional defined by co-founder and CEO Nomsa Makgabenyana in an interview with TechCabal.

“We started in 2018 building ad hoc and bespoke software solutions mainly in the insurance space for sales and operational teams to boost their productivity and to be able to get the maximum results from the data that they have,” she mentioned. “Last year, we then decided to completely pivot from that business to build and solely focus on our AI too, Seipone.ai”

A pivot price making

Although the timing for the pivot into AI appears nicely thought as it coincided with the bursting of generative AI into the mainstream, it was a tough pivot to make for Makgabenyana and her group.

“It was a difficult decision to make particularly because it meant we lost that consistent revenue from the consultancy business. But it was very important for us to take that strategic decision because we really believe in the potential of not only AI as a technology but of Seipone.ai as a business.”

Speaking extra on the product, Makgabenyana believes it would be the subsequent massive factor in serving to firms and types in Africa harness the ability of social media and AI to actually perceive the feelings and ache factors of customers.

Using the ability of synthetic intelligence and utilized machine studying, Seipone.ai fastidiously mines historic and real-time information to assist manufacturers and corporations perceive shopper sentiments for insightful decision-making, irrespective of their language and magnificence in linguistics, that are ever so fleeting. 

It is designed to study and perceive pure language and is ready to perceive Setswana and different indigenous languages like Swahili in addition to social media lingo and slang. It additionally provides feelings behind opinions and offers insights into what the general public notion is of the person’s matter of curiosity, rendering it a bot with synthetic intelligence capabilities.

Target customers embrace marketing businesses, promoting groups, model builders, and managers by serving to them to handle their model fame, determine on-line mentions, achieve shopper intelligence, and extra utilizing a mixture of algorithms that seize and comprehend 87% of information that is missed by conventional media instruments that may in any other case be disregarded.

Expansion ambitions

Although Seipone.ai at present serves shoppers solely in Botswana, who embrace the nation’s largest industrial financial institution and main cell community operator, the beginning has its sights set on coming into the East Africa market, particularly Kenya. 

There are additionally future plans to penetrate the Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Rwanda, USA, and Netherlands markets as there was a big quantity of curiosity there. The startup is at present in the method of elevating a seed spherical to additional construct out their minimal viable product (MVP) and in addition supercharge its enlargement ambitions, a course of she expects to be concluded inside the subsequent 6 to 18 months.

“We have raised money in the past through some grants and although it has helped extend our runway, we are talking to a couple of investors who are showing a lot of interest. The issues we are coming across are with regards to valuations and other tidbits, which are expected especially in an undesirable economic environment but all in all, everything is progressing well and we expect to succeed with fundraising,” mentioned Makgabenyana.

Additionally, Makgabenyana additionally believes that the funding will assist in marketing the product providing as a result of their expertise has proven that there is nonetheless a big information hole in most African markets in regards to the true energy of utilising AI as a marketing know-how device.

To deal with that hole in the mean time, Seipone.ai has developed a platform referred to as Seipone Learning which is mainly three workshops designed in-house to supply schooling on the ability of AI for manufacturers and corporations.

 “So there’s three workshops in Seipone Learning. One is taken by me and focuses on showing the value of AI for businesses. The second one focuses more on how customers can incorporate AI into their marketing process and is taught by my co-founder Kagiso Mpa. The third one speaks more on understanding the value of language in marketing and is taught by a consultant who is a specialist in Applied Linguistics,” added Makgabenyana. 

Marching ahead

A 12 months after totally pivoting to the AI product, Seipone.ai has had its justifiable share of wins, losses,challenges, and the teachings that include the method. According to Makgabenyana, all these will contribute enormously in the direction of constructing a enterprise that may revolutionise the best way firms and types take into consideration marketing in Africa.

“I think we entered the market at the right time because the success of ChatGPT has given much needed attention to not only generative AI products but also enterprise ones like ours. We have garnered a significant amount of traction like raising some funds and also being accepted into programs like CcHub Nigeria which has helped us to significantly improve our product,” she mentioned.

On what would be the essential focus over the following 12 months of operations, Makgabenyana alludes to the deal with constructing partnerships that may serve the enlargement mandate of the startup.

“Forming partnerships will be very, very important because they will allow us to add some wind to our sails in terms of traction. Partnerships will also give us more clout because as a new company operating in a nascent industry like AI, sometimes its a bit tougher to convince clients, most of them who are established corporates, about the validity of our value proposition.”

One of these partnerships is with quite a few marketing businesses in Botswana and different markets like Kenya. The partnerships search to clarify the worth addition that Seipone.ai can supply to the businesses’ shoppers, a transfer which Makgebenyana believes will considerably scale back the size of their gross sales cycles.

“With some enterprises, it can take up to ten months for them to decide to onboard a technology. To curtail that, we are partnering with agencies to show them the value of our product, value which they can then pass on to their client. It’s a win-win situation because we, on one hand, get to significantly reduce the time we take to “convince” manufacturers about our worth proposition and the businesses then again get to add worth to their shoppers’ operations.” 

In conclusion, Makgebenyana believes that the key to the ability of Seipone.ai is its means to permit manufacturers to have a vivid image of what customers consider them, an image which allows manufacturers to know what merchandise to construct, which to enhance and which to bin.

“Our product contextualises how consumers speak about their experiences with brands products. What I think is the most important aspect is that we create this context using consumers’ natural language input as well as slang. Most people on social media are more honest when they express themselves in their natural language,” she mentioned.

“There is so much value brands can unlock by having this context and for us, we are waiting to work with these kinds of brands who are obviously very agile and hungry to be successful in front of their consumers through incorporating the latest technologies.”