Voice Search – Dutch Uncles

Voice Technology and 5 Start-ups Who are Disrupting This Space

DU Desk — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 14:18:30 +0000

Voice Technology is a new-age enterprise technology segment that is rapidly coming-of-age. Voice AI (Artificial Intelligence) is a technology that can recognise voices digitally and can decipher speech. It’s scary and fascinating how this technology is slowly becoming more human. Voice AI can be used to emulate human voices and can even naturally converse like a human that enterprises are quickly incorporating for their use cases. Here are 5 voice tech start-ups in India who are disrupting this space.

Slang Labs

Slang Labs is a Bengaluru-based start-up that is working on a multilingual Voice Assistant as a Service platform called ‘Slang Conva’. This is a B2B product which will help other brands to create and add their own multilingual voice assistants to apps. This start-up is making noise in the voice technology space because they are propositioning voice assistants in native Indian languages. They are a disruptor because they are making the voice experience accessible and friendly to consumers. Their plug-and-play-voice assistant solution will help brands create multilingual in-app assistance for customers.

Saarthi.ai

Saarthi.ai is a deep tech start-up which offers a voice-first conversational AI technology. The company is based in Bengaluru and is disrupting the B2B segment in voice by helping enterprises automate their inbound/outbound calls and chats with their conversational voice-first AI assistant. This company is making its fair share of noise in the voice-based enterprise technology market through their conversational AI for low resource, global languages targeted at Indic, South Asian, Arabic and European users.

InCights

InCights is a voice biometrics start-up which is a B2B enterprise technology solution provider. They offer a cloud-based voice biometrics solution and a developer platform. They are disrupting the voice-based technology space with their enterprise-grade authentication security systems. They eventually want their enterprise clients to replace passwords with their product offering.

Uniphore

Uniphore is a well-known disruptor to the voice technology space. They provide a conversational AI and automation platform for enterprises. They are a disruptor because their voice solutions are transforming the customer experience for clients. Uniphore’s popular product offering is their voice authentication and biometrics solution ‘amVoice’.

Voxta

Another noteworthy start-up in the voice technology space is Voxta which is based in Hyderabad. They provide speech technology for their enterprise clients who are mostly call centres. They are a differentiator to the industry since their speech recognition engines can tap into multiple different languages and accents.

‘‘

Noteworthy start-ups in India offering conversational AI and voice based B2B solutions.

What’s in it for me?

The voice tech industry has been evolving and Voice AI is seeing applications across numerous key industries including healthcare, retail, hospitality, customer service, etc. The Asian market is seeing high adoption of voice AI solutions for commercial applications. The reason why the Asian market is a hotbed for voice start-ups is due to the sheer diversity of languages, accents, and dialects. There’s huge potential for B2B voice tech start-ups to acquire clients in the government, across enterprises, as well as investor interest.

Conversational AI tools have high demand among enterprise contact centres since they are easing the process of customer communication and subsequently enhancing the customer experience. There’s also great demand for chat and voice-based bots that cater to multiple different languages among enterprise contact centres. Ever since the revelation that massive new markets open up by targeting regional languages in India, every industry is in a race to develop multilingual products. Whether its vernacular gaming apps, social media, or speech services, the whole of Indian population can become your consumer base by being inclusive of local languages.

The post Voice Technology and 5 Start-ups Who are Disrupting This Space appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Top Technology Trends in the E-Commerce Industry

Shalmoli Sarkar — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 00:35:04 +0000

E-commerce shopping in Indians today is now the most preferred shopping mode. Though malls, retail stores, and local markets have reopened, the comfort and convenience of purchasing things within a click has caught shoppers to continue with online buying. According to a survey from LocalCircles, consumers have mostly bought groceries and essentials followed by medium-value items from e-commerce. The survey also says that safe deliveries and competitive pricing were the top reasons to shop with e-commerce. As per IBEF ( Indian Brand Equity Foundation), India’s e-commerce sector is expected to surpass the USA to become the second -largest e-commerce market by 2034. The E-retail market in the next five years is projected to exceed ~300-350 million shoppers, propelling the online Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) to US$ 100-120 billion by 2025. With easily available e-commerce website builder tools such as Shopify, Shoptimize at affordable costs is encouraging individuals to launch their business online thus creating cut-throat competition in the e-commerce market. E-commerce companies to remain relevant and cater to the changing customer demands need to upgrade themselves by implementing new technologies. Gone are the days when analysing the general patterns of customer shopping behaviour was sufficient to hold the customers. Below is the list of new technology trends that will be ruling the e-commerce industry.

‘‘

As per IBEF ( Indian Brand Equity Foundation), India’s e-commerce sector is expected to surpass the USA to become the second -largest e-commerce market by 2034.

Top Technology Trends for E-commerce

Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

A kind of application software that is built using common web technologies using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. PWA website appearance resembles that of a mobile app. It offers rich functionality and a smooth user experience associated with native apps. After the installation, when a user clicks on its icon on a device home screen it takes him straight to the website. With more competition brewing in the e-commerce space, entrepreneurs will pivot to PWAs to enhance user experience, generate superior traction, and drive business expansion.

Automated last-mile delivery

The yardstick to measure the efficiency of an e-commerce company is determined by faster deliveries and smooth logistics. To become more efficient with deliveries and logistics small e-commerce players are automating their logistics operations to cut down the delivery times of multiple products by introducing same-day and two-day deliveries. Features like real-time shipment tracking, COD acceptance, AI-driven courier recommendations, easy scheduling of pickups, optimized route planning will aid businesses to cut costs on delivery, improve customer retention and gain profits.

Collaborative recommendation

The data is the asset and lifeline of any business. Under AI, tools such as collaborative recommendations in websites suggest products to customers based on the historical data of other customers’ previous product purchases. The use of AI chatbots establishes seamless communication with customers instantly that gives companies adequate data to know and track consumers behaviour and provide personalized answers to address customer queries. Using ML, e-commerce can customize search results based on past purchases and browser history.

Voice-enabled shopping

Speaking takes less time than typing and also enables multitasking. With Google’s commercial featuring Gajraj Rao speaking about the benefits of voice search, it is enabling e-commerce marketers to consider voice search marketing as a part of SEO strategy. The use of keywords and phrases is slightly more elaborate while we speak than type. Thus, including them will enable the brand to rank higher when the words are uttered.

Google says that currently, more than 20 percent of the search queries are from voice searches. The voice search strategy will prove to be beneficial to the rural masses who are not comfortable to type or read in English. They might use a voice search to search for a product, nearby hospital or restaurant, etc. Reliance Jio’s affordable handsets have a stronghold in rural India, that has the voice search feature even though it is not android.

Real-time signal-driven analytics

Real-time data processing and analytics can help extract information of shoppers to provide actionable insights that will help in driving sales. With the shopper information on hand, the marketing and purchase recommendations can be more narrowed and specific for emerging customer micro-segments. Better business conversions can happen with better analysis of customer behaviour, demographics, and actions.

For the startups

Low entry barriers for setting up an e-commerce business are creating fierce competition. Companies need to differentiate themselves from the clutter by adopting various technology trends to offer customers a smooth buying experience and increase conversions.

The post Top Technology Trends in the E-Commerce Industry appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

What should D2C startups look out at 2021 on the ecommerce front?

Shalmoli Sarkar — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 12:30:05 +0000

D2C Brands Are Leveraging Technology To Acquire Customers

As we draw curtains to the year 2020, we realise that in the tight lockdown period, ecommerce became a lifeline to both business and consumers to ensure a normal life. Amid these, many private brands have recognized the benefits of eliminating middlemen and have opted for D2C (Direct to Consumer) channel. In D2C, startups enjoy the autonomy of designing brand messages and get direct access to consumer data. In 2020, the ecommerce market has unlocked online shoppers from tier 2 and 3 cities. Hence, 2021 for D2C startups will be the year for retaining and precise targeting of online shoppers through technology.

Voice search

The D2C startups might be surprised, but there lies a huge potential of voice search marketing. Apart, from being search optimised through the keyboard, they should enable their products and website to be voice search-friendly. According to IDC (International Data Centre), voice-enabled devices and the ‘hearables’ market is growing at a healthy rate of 289%. India is a smartphone-friendly nation, that too with an android that has the mandatory feature of voice assistants in smartphones. If D2C brands are worried about buyers who do not own a smartphone, they will still have access to voice search since now a simple Jio feature phone running on KraiOS is equipped with voice technology. These phones are widely found in far-flung rural areas. When the online store is voice optimised, Google pushes the business up in the search engine to be uttered first by the voice assistant which improves visibility. People utter long-tail keywords while speaking than typing, this makes voice SEO a must for

Artificial Intelligence

With advanced machine learning algorithms, D2C brands can offer hyper-personalised shopping experience to customers. One such technique is collaborative filtering which collects data based on the past product buys of the customers who visit the online store. It suggests other shoppers based on others’ choices who bought that same product or showed interest. For instance a customer looking for a formal shirt might get a suggestion of buying a matching tie for the same, as others have bought the same.

Omnichannel

Omnichannel will be a combination of sales through offline and online channels. Customers now seek convenience of easy product availability be it offline or online. Through omnichannel strategy, business efficiency of D2C will increase as the inventory becomes available in both offline and online channels. That in turn gives shorter time to get the product, increase sales, reduce logistics cost, leverage the supply chain, quicker deliveries and better utilisation of inventory.

The post What should D2C startups look out at 2021 on the ecommerce front? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.