Singapore chatbot startup Pand.ai secures pre-series A funding

Singapore-based conversational AI startup Pand.ai has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-series A funding from Bualuang Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Bangkok Bank.

The Pand.AI team / Photo credit: Pand.AI

It plans to use the new funds to expand the resources of its natural language processing (NLP) lab in Singapore, which focuses on developing conversational AI engines for Southeast Asian languages, according to a statement.

Pand.ai said that in 2019, research and development from the NLP lab helped it become the first company in the region to launch transfer learning-based NLP, which requires fewer data to achieve the same level of accuracy compared to previous generations of the technology.

“Pand.ai was one of the outstanding startups in the Bangkok Bank Innohub Season 2 global accelerator program,” said Bualuang Ventures investment advisor Krit Phanratanamala. “The team at Bualuang Ventures, Innohub, and Pand.ai have been working closely to roll out a solution for the Thai market.”

The new investment comes less than three months after the company announced its US$1 million raise from a sole Hong Kong-based angel investor. At the time, the company also announced the appointment of James Tan, who has been the nonexecutive chairman of its advisory board since February last year, as an executive-in-residence.

See also: Finance chatbot builder snags big clients, hits profitability after 18 months

Founded in 2016, Pand.ai develops multiplatform-capable chatbots that enable financial institutions to converse digitally with consumers using a proprietary NLP engine. Its technology has the ability to comprehend intent, has contextual memory, and understands languages such as English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Bahasa Malaysia, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Some of its current clients include international and regional financial companies such as Allianz, Great Eastern, Schroders, and Tokio Marine.