Artificial intelligence is on the rise in Southeast Asia, helping everyone from fashion designers to rice growers
As China and the United States compete for AI superiority, some of the most cutting-edge designs are emerging in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore
Lingga Madu dreams that one day his company will design and sell fashionable clothes at a price everyone can afford. Born of past experience, it is a business vision very much focused on embracing the future.
Having grown up in Jogja – where the average daily wage of US$3 means it ranks as one of Indonesia’s poorest cities – the 32-year-old software engineer recalled how the latest fashions were beyond the reach of most people.
That memory stayed with him and in 2014 Madu founded Sale Stock, a Jakarta-based e-commerce company where the guiding principle is to make more by charging less.
The formula? A moneymaking marriage between fashion design and artificial intelligence (AI) allowing the latest AI technology to mine and analyse market data and customer behaviour to a level beyond human capability, thereby identifying designs that will sell and tailoring production accordingly.
The company claims increased sales coupled with the savings made by an AI-focused screening out of designs likely to fail allows its products to be priced two-thirds more cheaply. Using this approach means the company has more data scientists than fashion designers.
“We are actually an AI company; we just happen to sell clothes,” Madu said.