Singaporean chatbot developer Pand.ai announces that it has received US$1 million in seed funding from a Hong Kong-based angel investor with more than 10 ventures across China, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore, The Business Times learned.

The company said it has plans to strengthen its executive bench-strength with the new capital.

The artificial intelligence startup specialises in developing chatbots that help Asia’s finance industry.

The company also has appointed James Tan, a former Tokio Marine Life Insurance Singapore (TMLS) chief executive, as an executive-in-residence. The newly-created role will see Tan spearhead Pand.ai’s insurance business in the Asia Pacific.

Tan himself has been the non-executive chairman of Pand.ai’s advisory board since February 2019.

Aside from leading TMLS, Tan has held various senior management roles in AIA, Bain & Company, Friends Provident, and Standard Chartered Bank.

Also Read: 4 made-in-Singapore chatbots that can raise your company’s productivity

Pand.ai co-founder and chief executive Shin Wee shared in a writeup for e27 that there are four traits that make a good chatbot. It can understand the inquiry, does what it designed for which is to serve, is able to interact with the inquirer, and is interesting enough to keep the conversation engaging and useful.

Recently, in September, Pand.ai announced the official launch of its AI engine, TE01. TE01 has the ability to generate Natural Language Processing (NLP) models that promise to cut error rate for intent classification by up to 25% while also significantly slow down NLP decay.

The new TE01 engine is built based on Transfer-Learning, a specific NLP method, which was first published by the research community in mid-2018 and is believed to be a more elegant solutions compared to existing NLP methods.

Pand.ai is deemed as one of the pioneers in the region when it comes to making Transfer-Learning based NLP chatbots commercial. It was the winner of an open tender to build an AI chatbot for Great Eastern Life Singapore (GELS) with the prototype of TE01.

GELS also becomes one of the firsts to use TE01 engine in the form of an integrated AI chatbot GERICA, which can perform inquiries like claim status check and policy details.

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