Born Digital’s digital persona can significantly improve the efficiency of work not only in the commercial sector but also in the public sector. The potential of the product, which is a unique combination of speech technologies and elements of visual, generative and conversational AI, has been supported by investors with an investment of 2 million euros.
CVC fund Seed Starter of Česká spořitelna, which is part of European banking group Erste, is expanding its portfolio for the third time this year with the ninth startup overall. Born Digital was also supported by J&T Ventures for the second time. Thanks to generative AI and especially thanks to large language models, a team of Czech developers has come up with a product called digital persona with many use cases in various fields. Based on its current use in the commercial sector, the software from Born Digital provides help to the state administration, healthcare or the Police of the Czech Republic.
“Not only do we perceive a huge growth potential of AI products offered by Born Digital, but we also recognize the high added value of those AI products. That’s why we have decided to support the founders not only through investment, but through active deployment of some use cases within the bank,” says Jiří Skopový, head of the Seed Starter program, adding that the digital persona brings an innovative approach not only in banking sector but also enables a significant shift towards the digitalization of the public sector. “For example, together with Born Digital, Česká spořitelna is working on a project of a digital public administrator, which is a simple step towards digitalization of the public sector. The project is enabling a wide variety of public services in municipalities with low civic infrastructure,” describes one of the projects Jiří Skopový, adding that the spectrum of use cases of Born Digital products is wide also within the commercial sector.
“The digital persona is not meant to replace humans, but it is here to relieve them of manual and repetitive tasks with low added value while keeping the human touch for the users,” says Tomáš Malovec, CEO and co-founder of Born Digital, adding that another benefit is the significant increase of working capacity as well as quality of provided services. “The product we have developed combines a unique technology with a human and friendly approach, which has not been so common in the case of artificial intelligence. This opens a tremendous amount of potential use cases in various fields,” adds Tomáš Malovec. According to him, the investment is an important stepstone for a Series A, which Born Digital aims to close within the next year and half.
“Tomas and Zenon from Born Digital were focused on AI already during the pre-seed financing round. The current wave of large language models may have started a revolution in the industry, but for Born Digital it’s just an important evolution of their product. Co-founders Tomáš and Zenon have shown that they can transform the current trends in technology into a scalable business. I believe the investment will help them on their journey to become a leader outside of the current region as well,” says David Polach, Principal at J&T Ventures.
At the moment, Born Digital has more than 80 B2B clients in 7 countries and with the currently growing demand it plans to further strengthen its presence abroad. It is the support of Seed Starter that can greatly facilitate the scaling of the startup across the countries in which the Erste Group operates. “The investment will mainly support the expansion outside of the region and the commercialisation of a new product, the so-called digital persona – in the form of a digital public administrator, digital insurance advisor, medical assistant, and many other roles. Born Digital is working on several use cases together with the Erste Group and thus the investment from Seed Starter is fitting. We are convinced that they ride the wave and I believe that their digital persona has the potential to become a global product,” adds David Polach.
Digital public administrator, medical assistant and help for police officers
The digital public administrator, which people could soon meet in the form of pilot projects at some offices or in more remote settlements, takes the form of an ATM that can solve many common tasks through artificial intelligence with a human touch – from paying garbage collection fees or pet ownership fees, to extracts from registers, even to setting up a business. “Working with a digital public administrator is very intuitive and thanks to the friendly approach, it represents a gradual transition to digitalization even for people who have so far preferred contact with a real human,” says Tomáš Malovec.
In a similar way, Born Digital’s digital persona can relieve doctors or police officers of routine tasks. The digital medical assistant automatically generates a transcript of the doctor’s conversation with the patient based only on the listening to the conversation and generates a final medical report. The aim is to minimize the time the doctors spend on administrative tasks. Reducing the average visit length and reducing the waiting times will bring an increase in the quality of time spent with the patient. The solution is currently being tested in several state and private healthcare facilities.
More than just a signpost
The digital persona has a broad variety of applications in the commercial sector as well – Born Digital is working on its use cases for banks, insurance companies, travel agencies, petrol stations, e-shops and shopping centers. In these cases, digital personas can not only help physically on site, but it can also serve a large group of clients via websites, apps or call centers. “The way we use generative AI and large language models brings a completely new and more efficient approach ,” says Zenon Sliwka, co-founder and sales director of Born Digital. “We don’t work by predicting the queries and problems that customers may have – our technology allows the digital personas to use all the relevant and available information from the given company channels, based on which they can not only advise the customer, but most importantly they can solve the issue,” says Zenon Sliwka, adding that one part of their AI is an analytical tool that helps to prevent common problems.
Česká spořitelna is also currently testing a pilot project of a digital banker. “Through the analysis of the workload and based on the interviews of our bankers with our clients, we are focusing on improving the provided services. Thanks to the innovative technology, the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence, we are seeking the weak points where we can help our bankers and we get the bank’s services even closer to the needs of our clients,” says Lukáš Pudil, Head of Česká spořitelna’s Personalization Trib, adding that it is the innovations from the Seed Starter portfolio that strengthen the position of Česká spořitelna a leader in the FS sector.
