Deal focus: Wiz moves fast in Southeast Asia

Ever since Apple launched Siri in 2010, back-and-forth conversations with talkbots have become a familiar concept. To Southeast Asia, however, it’s still new.

“Voice interaction is a large sector and Southeast Asia is a fast-growing market, but it has many different languages and each of those is not large enough to capture the attention of any industry giant, that’s our opportunity,” says Jennifer Zhang, CEO and co-founder of Singapore-based talkbot provider Wiz.Ai

If an engine can recognize 90% of standard English, the accuracy rate drops to 40-50% in Southeast Asia, according to Zhang. This is not only because of various accents, but also the fact that English is often used in combination with many other languages, from Chinese to Malaysian to Indian dialects.

Wiz’s core offering is an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven customer service talkbot that can currently recognize and interact with English spoken with different accents, and Bahasa Indonesian. It is developing an engine in Thai. The start-up, which launched last year, recently received a $6 million in Series A round led by GGV Capital. ZWC Partners, Insignia Capital, Wavemaker Partners, and Orion Fund also participated.

Patrick Cheung, founding and managing partner at ZWC, tells AVCJ that he discussed with Wiz where best to launch the business prior to leading a $2.5 million angel round last June.

“Indonesia was the only Southeast Asian country that has a large domestic market with a population of 270 million. We were discussing if we should start with Indonesia or Singapore. The conclusion is that Singapore is a better choice for 2B-focused start-ups. Its corporates set benchmarks for the whole of Southeast Asia, the Singapore government is keen to push technology innovation, and the country has a great talent base,” Cheung says.

Wiz has signed up 10 large corporate customers across healthcare, insurance, telecom, banking, and government services, leveraging its accuracy in different business scenarios. These solutions have been gradually standardized into some 70 modules, such as appointment management and reception desk services. In turn, they form the basis for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering targeted at smaller customers. 

“Singapore and Indonesia are very different markets. In Singapore, financial institutions must use proprietary services instead of clouds. That means all delivery is customized. But in Indonesia, the labor cost is much lower, and so price is key. If you’re too expensive, a human-based solution might be a better choice,” explains Zhang.

She adds that successful customization for large clients rests on delivery rather than product design. The talkbot must connect to customer relationship management (CRM) systems and in-house apps to feed the data into other channels, creating synergies. These connections need additional delivery work.

Meanwhile, now that product design is standardized, Zhang compares it to a Subway restaurant outlet. The ingredients are already prepared, and customers choose which ones they want to include in their sandwich. If a new function is ordered, Wiz must decide whether the effort that goes into customization is worthwhile.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Early-stage
• Technology
• Singapore
• GGV Capital
• Insignia Venture Partners
• ZWC Partners
• Wavemaker Partners
• TMT