You've heard of LLMs. Prosus is building its own LCM for commercial smarts.
Dutch technology investment firm Prosus NV is building its own 'large commerce model" to help its portfolio companies do business better, according to a top company executive.
'We're showing our large commerce model how users are traversing our portfolio companies' applications," said Paul van der Boor, vice president of AI at Prosus.
He explained it as taking the various touchpoints of a user's journey through an app—from opening the app to raising complaints to getting queries answered—and using all of them to create a model that contains 'commercial intelligence".
'When you have a model like that, that is created on a subset of users' interactions with an app, there are other group companies that can use that model to understand how to better help that customer," said Boor. 'We're trying to learn commercial intelligence based on all the interactions we can piece together. So when a new interaction comes in, we can predict what happens there."
Prosus has already begun testing this model with iFood, the Brazilian food delivery startup that was earlier led by Prosus's new chief executive officer Fabricio Bloisi, and OLX, a classified advertising company.
Boor expects lessons learnt from implementing the commercial intelligence model in Latin America and Europe will help Prosus' group companies.
'We've already done a couple of tests where we know it expands outside of food. The idea is that, at least today, in iFood, one model exists that can help with a whole range of tasks for their constituents," Boor said.
Also read | Prosus to take PE style bets, India one of three focus areas
AI in Prosus's portfolio companies
Prosus sees the current version of its large commerce model (LCM) as akin to OpenAI's ChatGPT-2, which was released in 2019. 'We know we have a path to get to the GPT-4 level, so we're taking it step by step," Boor said.
Going forward, the investment firm expects that both existing and new companies in its portfolio to have an AI-first approach. The shift comes alongside a more focused attitude towards investing as well since Bloisi took charge as CEO of Prosus 10 months ago.
Prosus-backed Swiggy Ltd, for example, uses various AI models from the minute a user opens the app as the Bengaluru-headquartered company seeks to make its food-delivery and quick-commerce experience highly personalised—such as preferred foods, restaurants, and delivery time.
'We will encourage those use cases across our whole group of companies. We know it works because of iFood in Brazil, we've seen it in Poland, and we encourage it here in India and the other way around," Boor said.
Also read | After lip-smacking Swiggy IPO, Prosus prepares for its next hit
Beyond artificial intelligence
Alongside its deeper investments in AI, Prosus expects a few other technology aspects to play a big role in its investment decisions.
'Agentic systems that can reason, that can do multiple tasks, and shop with or for you is a big thing. Our thesis is that agents will work for you to help you find what you need," said Boor. 'Second is that we expect all of the user interfaces to change as a result of multi-modality."
Multi-modality allows people to use an app through text, voice and even pictures.
Prosus expects voice to emerge as a big factor in user experience. Bengaluru-based e-commerce firm Meesho, for example, deploys several AI agents across the customer service workflow, including a voice bot for customer service that currently serves users in Hindi and English.
'We've already seen that in Brazil. It's similar to India because people there are naturally inclined to use AI. It offers a huge opportunity as one of the big factors and how to change the form factor of technology using AI," said Boor.
Prosus's notable AI investments this year include participating in a $13.5 million funding round in Luzia, a Spanish AI-based personal assistant app, earlier this month; a $7.25 million seed check to another Latin American personal assistant app called Zapia; and leading a $54 million Series-B funding in Taktile, a decision automation platform.
Prosus also closed its $1.7 billion acquisition of Despegar, a Latin American AI-first travel agency, this year. In India, the Dutch firm pumped in nearly $30 million into ride-hailing platform Rapido in February.
Last year, Prosus invested $100 million in Mumbai-based Vastu Housing Finance Corp. Ltd and acquired a 10.65% stake for $80 million in supply chain financing startup Mintifi.
Also read | Groww to acquire Prosus-backed Fisdom for around $150 million
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