Vambo AI is a South African company that lets people use world-class, highly advanced artificial intelligence (AI) in their languages.
To create artificial intelligence that “understands the languages of people in the rest of the world,” Vambo AI was established in April 2023 by Chido Dzinotyiwei and Isheanesu Misi.
“Most of the world has not used AI – or explored its revolutionary power for education, economic empowerment and more – because it is not built in languages they understand,” Dzinotyiwei said.
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Vambo AI Empowers Individual Users for Writing, Searching, and More
Users can write, search, translate, and transcribe with Vambo AI. Businesses and innovators may utilise the startup’s application programming interface (API) and developer tools to construct solutions for individuals in numerous geographical locations and regionalise solutions that “have solved pertinent problems in other regions.”
Currently, the platform can understand eleven different languages, some of which are Arabic, KiSwahili, IsiZulu, and French. In 2019, Dzinotyiwei established Vambo Academy, a firm that focuses on language acquisition, and Vambo AI emerged as a result of the lessons learned from that endeavour.
“We found a significant market gap for multilingual generative AI platforms specifically tailored to address the linguistic diversity of communities with low-resource languages,” she added.
“Approximately 95 percent of African languages lack digital representation, which has dire consequences for economic participation, language preservation and societal development. While various language learning and translation tools are available, they often focus on widely spoken languages or lack the depth and accuracy needed for lesser-known African languages.”
Traditional language-learning apps like Duolingo and Babbel exist, but they focus very little on the subtleties and difficulties of African languages.
Africa-focused AI-powered platforms aim to improve language learning, content creation, communication, and cultural preservation. Kenya, Zimbabwe, India, and the US are interested in the South African platform.
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How has Vambo AI bootstrapped its business?
With a few AWS credit payments, Vambo AI has chiefly built its business from scratch. It makes money by licensing APIs and offering business-to-business (B2B) solutions.
“Building AI with limited resources has not been without its challenges, but we deeply believe in our solution and committed ourselves to making it work. Our first MVP had four languages, and now we are in 11 languages widely spoken in Africa,” Dzinotyiwei said.
The startup was recently chosen for the latest Injini Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship accelerator in South Africa. Last year, it also participated in Grindstone Africa, a widely known accelerator for high-growth businesses.
According to Dzinotyiwei, “We are looking forward to making good use of the resources that are available to facilitate the further development of Vambo AI.”
“As we grow, we want to make our models better, add more languages to our platform, and add features that meet the needs of our customers.”