Denis Opudo
The Kingston Ontario based Canadian firm 1001 Squared Artificial Intelligence has officially bought QuickHelp Nigeria at an undisclosed amount. 1001 Squared Artificial Intelligence is a firm with an aim to facilitate and promote the use of AI application. This is aimed at enhancing and improving the quality of education. This is more so in less privileged and less served areas globally.
The acquisition came after an intensive negotiation between the teams from both firms. This will see the transfer of IP rights, associated technologies and core technologies from QuickHelp Nigeria to 1001 Squared Artificial Intelligence. This is through acquired or merger deal. QuickHelp Nigeria is an AI-powered virtual platform. It assists locals to locate businesses close to them, buy airtime, discover places and people get a taxi or a bike and check traffic. The platform offers those services diligently and different way. This is different from labyrinth venture directories found online. They do serve many contracts giving users a hard time of searching through to get what they really want.
The platform has a voice-enabled virtual agent known as QuickMe. It makes it easier for users to quickly locate goods or services found around their communities within Conversational User Interface (CUI). The platform recently activated its main feature referred to as Speech Recognition and Text to Speech (TTS). The feature places the chatbox in a position to talk and record loudly. Furthermore, QuickHelp is found on Messenger and Twitter. The app can be downloaded from the Google Play store. QuickHelp’s CEO and Co-founder Tosin Odubela say that the platform helps SMEs to easily locate local businesses. He adds that the platform helps to expose many businesses that are doing well but are not able to advertise themselves.
QuickHelp was founded by a group of business professionals, techies and enthusiasts including CEO Odubela, Peter Laniran, Kayode Idowu, Fayemi David, Olayande Biola and Isaac Falade. According to the CEO, the idea to come up with the platform was coiled at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. This was after struggling to get a qualified plumber in 2014. Therefore, the platform was developed after the need to solve the problem of locating businesses at ease. After almost a year of piloting and a number of interactions with challenges brought by the Do Not Disturb (DND) that is used by many Nigerian telecommunication networks, the group opted for AI as their backed technology.
