UTU Technologies (UTU), an AI and BlockChain technology based in Kenya and the parent firm of MARAMOJA transport, an Uber competitor, has raised undisclosed funding from Zeroth.AI, a Hong Kong AI accelerator to put African AI on the global map.
According to Zeroth.AI founder, Tak Lo, “UTU is developing revolutionary technology that we believe has global applications and potential to tokenize the sharing economy. They’ve assembled a world-class team and already demonstrated that their tech works for Africa’s biggest sharing economy platforms. We’re excited to work with them to bring their trust solutions to the global market.”
With the funding from Zeroth which invests in artificial intelligence and machine learning companies that solve tomorrow’s problems, UTU Technologies will offer its trust recommendations to sharing economy platforms across Africa after years of honing it’s AI-driven trust engine.
Notable use of UTU AI technology was on its own MARAMOJA transport, serving Kenya with trusted e-hailing services since 2015, and the MARAMOJA family of mobility brands rapidly expanding around Africa. In the Nairobi taxi market UTU has served up trust recommendations for three years via its MARAMOJA transport app.
UTU’s trust recommendations have also improved their sales conversion and customer satisfaction by 20% and driven strong viral acquisition.
UTU CEO Jason Eisen said, “The current state of digital trust is really sad, our whole system is based on star ratings and anonymous reviews that have little to do with how people actually trust – based on their close relationships and people they know personally. At UTU, our mission has always been to bring this human model of trust to the digital economy.”
UTU’s trust engine has been trained over three years on hundreds of thousands data points and transactions in its quest to build an AI capable of understanding human trust and connecting users to personally trusted service providers. Having honed its trust engine’s predictive power, UTU is excited to bring its trust recommendations engine to other platforms operating in various sectors of Africa’s sharing economy, including marketplaces for local on-demand services, remote professional services, and P2P lending and eCommerce.
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UTU will announce more about its pilots in the coming months and invites platforms facing challenges in building trust to contact UTU about its services.
