Locally made AI chatbot pulls global clients

Local technology company Reve Chat is now facilitating access to information for citizens of Mexico while protecting their personal data with its AI-enabled chatbot, underscoring the Bangladesh tech industry's growing clout in the global markets.

Reve Chat developed Cavinai for the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI), an autonomous body of the Mexican government.

"Our local talent developed the chatbot," M Rezaul Hassan, CEO of Reve Group, the owning company of Reve Chat, told The Daily Star.

It can answer complex questions asked by citizens and provide them with fast support, he added.

The citizens of the North American country can access information from the INAI's website and over WhatsApp.

"The government authority seeks to ease communication with the citizens using the latest technology as we have proved our technology's effectiveness in different countries," he added.

Cavinai is a new tool to facilitate, accessible and direct communication with the citizens.

The main purpose of the bot is to serve its citizens with necessary information and guidance related to transparency and security.

Approximately, 96.87 million internet users of the country can avail the service by simply using a smartphone or a computer.

In the first 30 days of deployment, the bot handled more than 4,000 unique sessions. And out of these queries, 13 per cent have been made over WhatsApp.

Chatbots are automated conversational programs offering customers a more personalised way to access information. The key takeaway is that they make use of machine learning and AI to understand queries or requests and formulate an accurate response of the users based on the conversation context via messaging apps, websites, mobile apps, or the telephone.

Reve Group, which entered the telecommunication and technology business in 2003, launched Reve Chat in 2015 against the backdrop of business process automation swelling globally with artificial intelligence-driven technology, replacing traditional call centres.

Chatbot virtual assistants are becoming increasingly popular among users in business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) settings.

The global chatbot market size was worth $526 million in 2021. It is expected to reach $3.6 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.9 per cent during the forecast period (2022-2030), according to Straits Research, a market research organisation specialising in research and analytics.

Reve's chatbot can be integrated with Website, WhatsApp, Viber and Facebook Messenger and local talent with expertise in machine learning and artificial intelligence are developing these tools.

Reve Chat initially started with live chat services with local clients such as Rokomari, Othoba, Grameenphone, Transcom Digital and Southeast Bank.

Later in 2021, Reve Chat, which now employs around 70 tech talents, started developing chatbots.

In May that year, LankaBangla Finance launched "Shikha" chatbot, a virtual assistant developed by Reve Chat to provide faster, improved, and convenient services to customers.

The company is also getting many orders from global clients.

It has so far developed chatbots for many international clients including the Commercial Bank of Kuwait, Telecom Networks Malawi, Canadian Hearing Services, South America's leading transportation company Beat, India's Coolwinks and Public Gold Malaysia to name a few.

Recently, it has secured a big deal with one of India's largest e-Learning platform iNeuron.ai.

Hassan said modern organisations were now using smart AI-enabled chatbots to communicate with their audiences. Government organisations were no exception. They are also making smart decisions in choosing smart technologies for better communication with the citizens, he said.

"We have recently developed a chatbot for one of the largest financial organisations in the world and it will be launched soon," he added.