Ex-Tokocrypto CEO wants to revolutionize gift-giving in Indonesia

Tokocrypto co-founder Pang Xue Kai / Photo credit: Tokocrypto

Gabriel Budi Sutrisno also contributed to this report. 

Gift-giving is an important way of showing appreciation in many cultures, including in Indonesia, where even the smallest of celebrations are marked with physical tokens of gratitude.

Realizing this and following a conversation at last year’s NextIcorn conference, Pang Xue Kai and his team decided to form an AI-driven startup to simplify and personalize the process: Untukmu AI.

“Our goal here is to make it easier for customers to find the ‘perfect’ gift while also helping small businesses, especially MSMEs, to reach wider customers, especially corporate customers,” Pang tells Tech in Asia.

Apart from being the startup’s co-founder, Pang is also the former CEO and co-founder of Tokocrypto, which was acquired by Binance last year. He stepped down after the takeover.

Untukmu AI, which was only established last month, connects customers with merchants, which range from startups to multinational corporations.

It also incorporates a virtual assistant called Dewi, which can factor in recipient interests, personality, and age, as well as the gift-giving occasion to recommend users the most relevant present. Other features include a gift tracker, a budgeting function, a calendar for upcoming family and friends events, and social media integration.

Pang believes that consumers have increasingly felt the absence of a personalized shopping experience with the boom of marketplaces like Tokopedia and Blibli in Indonesia.

See also: Binance in talks to acquire Indonesian crypto exchange

Artificial intelligence has become the next big thing. Untukmu AI is looking to herald in the tech in Indonesia with a culturally relevant use case.

“I’ve always liked to work on new technologies and study how they can be better utilized to better our daily lives. Hence, just like how we leveraged Tokocrypto to spread awareness and education on blockchain technology in Indonesia, we wanted to find a way to utilize AI to help improve the lives of people,” Pang says.

“I thought that this would be the best way for AI to be implemented as the act of gifting is so universal.”

In its current iteration, Untukmu AI’s offering uses natural language processing and machine learning components.