Singapore AI startup Glee Trees secures funding from 500 Startups

Singapore-based Glee Trees, a startup offering cognitive automation solutions, has secured funding from Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture fund 500 Startups.

Photo credit: Glee Trees

The startup will use the new funds to further improve its proprietary solutions and extend its reach, primarily in China, and expand into Vietnam and Indonesia, according to a statement. It will also enhance certain capabilities such as the document extraction feature that can “read” documents in multiple Asian languages, including Chinese and Indonesian.

“Our unique focus is in creating Asian-language AI and automation that is accessible to all users even if they don’t have strong technical skills,” said Christopher Lim, founder and CEO of Glee Trees.

Founded in 2016, the startup focuses on developing cognitive automation solutions that are used in industries such as banking, insurance, shipping, logistics, government, manufacturing, and services.

The company’s core product, Gleematic, started out as a robotic process automation (RPA) solution. It later incorporated AI, covering image recognition, pattern processing, natural language processing, and contextual analysis, to make information processing more intuitive.

RPA is a relatively new category of software. It allows automation of repetitive processes by mimicking the same actions that a human performs on a computer, rather than relying on complicated and rigid APIs.

Citing data, Glee Trees said the RPA market has been growing fast in the past year. Gartner reported a 63% growth in global RPA software market in 2018. Spending on RPA tools is expected to top US$1 billion in 2019 and will ratchet up to US$1.5 billion by 2020, according to Forrester. The global AI market size, meanwhile, is massive and is set to reach US$169 billion in 2025.

Glee Trees claims that it has recently recorded 300% growth in annual revenue after acquiring enterprise customers in five countries including Singapore, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia.