Una is here to help you invest
Potential investors in the upcoming One on One initial public offering (IPO) will have an online tool like no other to take them through the process without human intervention.
Ed-tech company One on One Educational Services (One on One) has developed an artificial intelligence voice bot capable of fluent interaction with users. Founder and CEO Ricardo Allen believes this technology will accelerate the company’s pace in securing its spot as a global leader in tech innovation.
The bot, which the company is now calling Una, was launched last week as an added source of information to One on One’s Prospectus for its upcoming IPO. Una allows potential investors in One on One to have all their questions answered conversationally through WhatsApp or Telegram, thereby delivering a holistic and superior experience.
The bot is the first of its kind in Jamaica. “The technology is really to provide a way for persons to interact and get information in a conversational way that doesn’t necessarily require a human to be at the next end. From our perspective, using this technology leads to several efficiency gains,” data scientist at The University of the West Indies and developer of Una bot, Dr Ricardo Anderson, said. “We have internal competencies to buildout the AI behind the technology, and so we have been able to use these competencies to deploy several different versions of this bot and one of the versions is Una,” he added.
Dr Anderson is working with a team of five to programme the bot to serve multi-market segments. The cutting-edge technology has already been integrated into select One on One’s educational courses to manage resource efficiency while improving student satisfaction and success.
The AI-driven virtual teaching assistant creates a highly personalised experience for each student. With machine learning capabilities, the technology does not simply answer common questions; it also analyses the learning process and makes suggestions to optimise the approach to instruction.
To date, One on One has created a bot to work as a virtual teaching assistant for its course of study, One on One for Teachers and Students or ‘OneX’, offering personalised learning for courses such as mathematics and the sciences.
Students’ interaction with the bot allows them to freely ask questions they would otherwise try to avoid and can help students stay on track by setting up a regular schedule planner with reminders for courses and assignments. “Imagine for a minute that we can create artificial intelligence adaptive learning that can be offered globally…this small company out of Kingston, Jamaica. Just imagine what we can achieve if we are bold enough to solve some big problems whether in the education system or otherwise,” Allen said.
Since the release of the prospectus on July 29 and the investor’s interaction with Una, Allen says the company has received numerous requests for AI technology to power their organisations.
Some of the service sectors now being explored to have the conversational bot programmed to grow One on One’s business-to-business customer base include training and development courses and customer, banking and investment services. “Customer service is a big one. Our use case is education but imagine having the technology powering any process. Internally, we can programme the bot to assist with knowledge management, so every time a new team member is hired you have to train that individual,” Allen said. “But imagine something that harnesses all of that knowledge, that the new team member could have a conversation with…that’s the power of the bot on the inside. On the outside the power of Una would be in customer service, for example. These are some of the opportunities that exist and coming out of this IPO we are very confident that this new service will be taken up by the market,” Allen said.
One on One intends to start offering the technology in Jamaica and expand into the Caribbean region, eventually securing global clients.
As for the prospectus, One on One will open its IPO on August 12 and close on August 19. The company will then look to become the 100th listing on the Jamaica Stock Exchange. Sagicor Investments Limited is the lead broker and lead arranger for the transaction.