（Left： Hishab Zubair Ahmed CEO、Right： TEPCO i-Frontiers Koiso Executive Vice President）
TEPCO Frontier Partners, LLC. (Headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, hereinafter referred to as “TFP”) has made strategic investment (Conversion of convertible notes) of US $ 1,000,000 in Hishab Singapore Pte. Ltd. (Headquarters: Singapore, CEO: Zubair Ahmed, hereinafter referred to as ” Hishab “).
Hishab is a business operator that develops voice payment and call center automation services based on core conversational AI solutions that utilize telephony networks in various countries in East Asia, mainly in Bangladesh.
In Japan, since the full liberalization of electricity retail market, including households, in 2016, TEPCO Energy Partner Inc. (hereinafter referred as “TEPCO EP”) has searched business partners for developing new services all over the world, through TEPCO i-Frontiers (hereinafter referred as “TiF”), a vehicle specializing in new business development. Hishab is a promising alliance partner that TiF met in that activity, and while making this investment, TEPCO EP is also proceeding with the verification of the automation of the call center functions using the voice AI solution owned by Hishab.
In the near future, TiF will collaborate to solve various issues of consumers faced in their daily lives and will realize “Reverse Innovation” in Japan by deploying AI technology developed mainly in Bangladesh by Hishab.
■ About Hishab Singapore Pte. Ltd.
Hishab is an AI startup company founded in Bangladesh in 2015 and has about 60 employees. It has business bases in Bangladesh, India, and Japan, and development bases in Germany.
Hishab ‘s patented VUI (Voice User Interface) and middleware can be connected to a wide range of business systems, including ERP, and users can enter information into the system simply by voice through the mobile phone. There is no need to connect to the Internet or download apps, just a telephony network is required, and no difficult operations are required, so it is often used by people in developing countries who do not have IT literacy.
In addition, the AI conversation engine provided by Hishab properly identifies the intention of the conversation with the speaker and responds after accumulating the context of the conversation so far, so they can establish a natural conversation as if talking with a human operator.
Hishab’s in-house developed Bengali speech recognition accuracy has already exceeded 99.8%, with a total of 1.6 million registered users as of March 2022 in MSMEs (Retail Stores), MFIs (Microfinance Institutions), and banks in Bangladesh.
■ About TEPCO Frontier Partners, LLC.
CVC (Corporate Venture Capital) of TEPCO EP , in collaboration with TiF, which is responsible for value co-creation and business acceleration with partners, actively and flexibly invests in companies with excellent ideas, advanced technologies, and venture spirits that contribute to solving social issues with “life” as the keyword.
■ About TEPCO i -Frontiers, Inc.
TiF was established to focus on the whole ideation process from searching potential business partners to conducting POCs. Not only will the new products and services coming out of this process be delivered to TEPCO EP clients, but also TEPCO EP will boost its sales promotion through partnering with TiF.
[Contact for inquiries regarding this matter]
TEPCO Frontier Partners / TEPCO i -Frontiers _
Person in charge: Aomatsu
E-mail: admin-tfp@tepco-if.com
Hishab Singapore Pte. Ltd.
Person in charge: Mio Ahmed
E-mail: mio.sugiyama@hishab.co
