Frontier Capital launches Sri Lanka’s first AI ChatBot for tuk tuk industry

Emerging investment banker Frontier Capital Partners - that transferred some of the country’s prominent group companies to conglomeration in the post war era from 2009 to 2019 in a decade - has recently released a newly developed advanced Artificial Intelligence ( AI) ChatBot assistant titled ‘TukBoy’.

According to company officials, the ‘ TukBoy’ Chatbot has been developed using world’s leading Artificial Intelligence ( AI) based Super Computer IBM Watson’s technology along with the support of English, Sinhala and Tamil languages.

“As a person at my age who has already seen the world transforming with technology in the last five decades so far, only a few millionaires or billionaires as investors will look at the future and current global trends and then encourage youngsters in an economy to come up with new products to disrupt the conventional business landscape of an emerging economy by taking the technology to poor, middle class and the emerging middle class,” Founder and Managing Partner of Frontier Capital Partners Nishan Sumanadeera said in a media announcement, on the new product’s investment logic of his company.

“Carefully studying the future trends of the world and other countries and the potential of AI technology we took a step forward in investing in the AI based Virtual Assistant industry or the famous Chatbot industry just few months ago. Now we have come up with a AI Chatbot product that caters to over 22 million commuters in Sri Lanka in all three lan- guages,” Mr. Sumanadeera said, adding: “We further intend to develop this in many languages as possible in time to come. I hope this will help Sri Lanka’s future generations and its people as well as commuters or even tourists visiting Sri Lanka on making proper and efficient decisions on affordable and convenient transportation solutions to reach their destination.”

He said if one takes Sri Lanka’s economy that is worth US$ 87 billion or Rs. 13 trillion GDP, ‘our 1 million tuk tuk drivers’ alone from the middle class control 10 per cent of the economy with an income generation of over $8 billion, Rs. 1.3 trillion or Rs. 1,300 billion every year and they pay direct and indirect taxes amounting to over Rs. 60,000 every month from their earnings worth over Rs. 100,000 a month.

Mr. Sumanadeera further pointed out that he and his team invested over Rs. 150 million, four years ago in a technology based transport company – Tuk Tuk in Sri Lanka which has now grown to over Rs. 1 billion in value giving life and earning potential for over hundreds of thousands among the one million Tuk Tuk drivers and 4 million motor cyclists in the country apart from other vehicle owners and drivers.

Artificial intelligence ( AI) is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Artificial intelligence (AI) also can automate a large number of processes and increasingly, the technology is streamlining human intervention between clients and systems.