Southeast Asian small businesses using AI to stay competitive
ASEAN member Nations’ Flags other than Pullman Hotel, the venue of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting in Luang Prabang in January 2024, Luang Prabang, Luang Prabang.
Tang Chhin Sothyang Chhin Sothy | AFP | Getty Images
In the case of artificial intelligence and productive artificial intelligence, the US and China are often in mind. However, he says that small businesses of Southeast Asia have great potential to be ignored.
In fact, according to Jochen Wirtz, a marketing professor of the Singapore National University, Marketing Professor, Jochen Wirtz, who says that the remaining ones will be “will be moved to a franchise business or leave the market by larger players”.
“Either grow up and adopt or die,” he added.
AI and GENAİ will contribute approximately 120 billion dollars to the gross domestic product of the region until 2027, Boston Consulting Group “Open the lock of Southeast Asia’s AI potential,” He stated the potential of technology to “redefine business processes and unlock new income flows”. And Google’s E-Conomy Sea 2024 Report Singapore found that the Philippines and Malaysia are among the top 10 worldwide searches and demands for artificial intelligence and showed a “curiosity” and “active interest” in the region.
Youth is an advantage. Among the countries participating in the survey in Asia-Pacific, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines have the highest percentage of business owners or leaders under 40 years of age. EBM Australia’s Small Business Research 2024-25.
“The future is bright because … a very young population, a very young population, a very curious population,” he said. “They’re starting to have a global sound and it’s easy to adapt any new technology.”
Some businesses of the region, as well as competition, how they use to stay above the opportunities and barricades they face.
The most popular use
Customer Service is the leading use of Southeast Asia e-commerce, marketing and advertising. A joint report of Lazada and Kantar About the tendency to adopt AI in the six largest economies in Southeast Asia. Singapore, also known as ASEAN-6, form Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand.
A McKinsey Survey A similar tendency released in March: Companies adopted Genei for marketing and sales and led the accusation of technology companies. In addition, most of the adopted use of technology to create text, 63% of the companies participating in the survey did this.
Genai offers a unique blessing for a variety of linguistic regions as linguistic as Southeast Asia: In addition to writing personalized marketing messages, it can convert promotional texts into different languages.
For example, Lita Global, an Indonesian -based social media platform for players, provides a lot of benefit. Since Openai’s models integrated their models into the second half of last year, he said he could host almost twice online game activity per month thanks to greater efficiency.
The company said that each event can increase weekly income by 20%, it is a great support for this business.
Genai and employees can quickly translate announcements about activities from English to Southeast Asian languages to reach more users in the region. And this releases them-lta Global, according to Global, the time used to write, translate and format the promotional text can now be used to organize more income-generating activities.
The company also uses Genai in a chat function to propose answers to users. Lita Global is a social platform where users can hire other players to play online.
Rental players usually chat with users before an order for a game session. However, this can be difficult when the demand for players is high and recruitment players are busy with other matches. Yihao Zhang, CEO of Lita Global, said that rental players using the answers recommended by AI have increased by 10% to 20% in orders.
Zhang, “That’s why we use AI to help them to increase their productivity, to help users more usable.” He said.
Another way for Southeast Asian MSME (micro, small and medium -sized enterprises) to use Genai in marketing is AI live broadcasting. Google’s Sea E-Conomy report said that live shopping has become more popular in the region. Live shopping or live broadcasting includes a host that usually exhibits products for sale. This not only includes clothing trials, but also the shoppers who are answered in the comments section of the shopping section.
While non -state currents are traditionally hosted by people in studios, MSMES may lack funds or technical knows to carry out regular live broadcasts to increase sales. Jensen Wu, CEO of Topviewai, can open the doors of new opportunities for AI live broadcasting.
Topviewai says that AI live broadcast services on the website can cost about $ 1 per minute. Wu said that instead of spending examples of workmanship of studio rental, goods and human hosts, companies can enable a person to watch a live flow. This helps to reduce costs while increasing sales and provides a “quite good” investment return.
Cost Problem
However, the increase in productivity is not cheap.
Therefore, small businesses are limited to adopting artificial intelligence on a small scale for now. For example, using AI chatbots for relatively simple tasks can reduce labor costs, as subscriptions tend to be cheap for such services. Furthermore, according to the Parida of Rmit Vietnam by various third -party vehicles on the market, business owners can also choose.
Parida said that small businesses in fashion and food and beverage industries in Vietnam have begun to use chat boots to manage questions and orders.
“Beyond that, something requires a lot of expense,” he said.
Larger companies can recruit software companies to develop customized sophisticated systems according to the needs of an enterprise, while many people cannot meet.
Even companies with expertise in integration of artificial intelligence pay premiums to do so.
For example, Lita Global spends about $ 2,000 for AI every month, and some of them go to buy coins for Openai’s application programming interface (API). Instead of asking companies to build the AI model from scratch, the APIs allow companies to build on Openai models.
However, as AI develops, the cost of use is expected to decrease. Research and Consultancy firm Gartner estimated until 2027 in February, the average prices of the application programming interfaces for Genei will fall less than 1% of the average price for the same technology.
This may mean even more affordable price for small businesses that adopt artificial intelligence for businesses.
View for the region
In developing markets with low labor costs in Southeast Asia, companies can be less motivated to increase productivity through the adoption of technology. But technology “much better [outcomes]”For current business applications, Wirtz from Nus Business School. AI is another way to adopt technology.
This compared this with the popularization of e-having services, which reduce the risk of defrauding tourists by taxi drivers in foreign countries, as e-having applications may estimate the price of a journey.
According to Parida, the excitement of adopting AI with the population of an entrepreneur entrepreneur in economies such as Vietnam, where labor costs are low.
“Very hungry young people,” he said.
