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NexMind AI: Accelerating Business Impact with AI
Home-grown NexMind AI is a revolutionary industry player with AI and Big Data on its agenda, transforming the digital landscape with innovative solutions. Its Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Francis Lui, gives an insight on how the company evolved to ride the wave of growth in AI technology, machine learning, deep learning and big data modeling.
As economies and markets across the world digitalise, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data have become common buzzwords in the information technology sector. According to Gartner, big data is high-volume and high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decisionmaking, and process automation.
Leveraging on this growing demand for big data and AI in Malaysia, NexMind AI, a home-grown company, has accepted the mandate to drive AI, and create machine learning technologies that will surpass human intelligence.
Spearheaded by Francis Lui, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, NexMind AI Sdn Bhd (formerly known as NexODN International Sdn Bhd) is a leading AI-powered technology company with a vision to make Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) robots modeled on computational concepts of the human brain. The company was established to help clients solve business challenges with the use of the best predictive model for data. The team at NexMind AI believes in the importance of understanding, planning, strategising and optimising AI solutions for businesses to capture the attention of the right target audience.
Speaking about the inspiration behind NexMind AI, Francis Lui explains, “I first founded Nexus Mediaworks in 2005, as the first search engine optimisation (SEO) company in Malaysia. We provided SEO services until 2 years ago, and then we pivoted the entire technology towards AI and Big Data bordering.”
As the digital landscape evolved, Nexus Mediaworks evolved to become NexMind AI to ride the wave of growth in AI technology, machine learning, deep learning and big data modeling.
“We started our first product called NexODN, which is a technology that uses machine learning and deep learning as well as AI convolutional Neural Network and recurrent Neural Network that practically covers everything. This technology is a springboard for us to grow the company to the next level,” Francis adds.
NEXODN
Explaining the sequence of events, Francis says, “When we first started the product, NexODN, we moved from the value chain of NexODN to NexMind AI. When we developed this product, we had hundreds of clients, and we wanted to automate that.”
The intention was to develop technology that emulates the MRI machine. “When you go on an MRI machine, you have precisely what is needed. As Google has moved into machine learning and deep learning, it was time that we pivoted the whole technology toward that,” he adds.
By pivoting the technology and using machine learning and deep learning, NexMind AI was wellequipped to ride on Google, in the shortest time and in less than 30 days, regardless whether a client’s website is a new domain or has been around for some time. At the same time, by using data modelling,
NexMind AI is able to identify the sort of data searched by users, thus addressing the all-important aspect of user intent and searcher intent. “The moment we address searcher intent and user intent, we are addressing Google. Google serves the best data set to users which is you and I. Basically that is our USP,” Francis explains.
When NexMind AI first started out, it was handling SEO for Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos Asia, MSN and Google. “However, as the internet landscape evolved Google appears to have conquered the internet world, which shows that market and users have changed drastically. Why are other players not around anymore? Because the user intent is not being served and the lack of accuracy,” he adds.
NEXFINTECH
Considering the evolution in the marketplace, NexMind AI has started developing the first version of NexFintech, using its core NexODN technology. “We came out with the first version for stock market predictions modelling. Using our recurring Neural Network, we trained our AI to be smarter in order to provide better research results, such as the upwards and downwards trend of the stock market using sentiment analysis. That is basically how we are incorporating our AI into the Fintech circle,” he elaborates.
On NexMind AI’s dreams for AGI, Francis explains that since the company’s inception it has developed a total of four technologies using AI. “We aim to be another company just like Data Robot and Alpha Sense in the USA, but serving the Southeast Asian and Oceania markets. Thus far, we have a well-established footprint outside of Malaysia and we hope to establish a strong footprint within the country by the end of next year,” he adds.
As much as AGI is suitable for financial market research, stock market research and forex market research, it is also applicable for the medical industry. “We have used this technology to apply into different business models for the purpose of leads generation, and leads routing,” shares Francis. In covering all bases, NexMind AI is also developing solutions using AGI for social media via computational concepts.
NEXIFY AI
“We have generated a brandnew prototype product for retail e-commerce using our core NexODN model, called Nexify AI. This product offers business intelligence for e-commerce platforms on customers’ buying behaviour and possible products that the platform can upsell to customers.
“It holds tremendous prospects and we hope to deploy this product into e-commerce sites such as Zalora, Lazada and Shopee. This product offers customers business intelligence and insights into customers’ buying behaviour using data modelling,” Francis explains.
NEXLEAD
NexMind AI has also introduced NexLead, an intelligent leads routing system that manages inquiries and leads. “When you rank well in Google, leads come in. With NexLead, levels are managed efficiently and escalated to the next level which is basically leads routing and escalation,” says Francis.
AI AND MACHINE LEARNING
According to Francis, AI complements machine learning, and deep learning. He explains that machine learning is basically a process of being trained to continuously improve and complement human beings to make better decisions. “Aside from machine learning, our entire concept was developed using Recurrent Neural Network and Conventional Neural Network, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Network for Natural Language Processing,” he notes.
MALAYSIA’S MOMENTUM IN AI
On Malaysia’s readiness for AI, Francis explains that the country is still not at par yet in terms of manpower and knowledge workers, where AI, machine learning, deep learning, and big data are concerned. “We are now very dependent on foreign talents. This limitation is due to education in this area is still lacking. Malaysia is still very much into software development and has not spiralled into AI, machine learning, deep learning and big data as compared to neighbouring countries such as Singapore and Vietnam, among others,” he adds.
In talking about his company’s footprint in the Malaysian market, Francis says that right now the NexODN products currently caters for 98% of SMEs and 2% for multinationals and conglomerates. The company has also built another subset called NexRank, to assist the government in their digital initiatives to help micro-SMEs to move to the next level of digitalisation.
At the recent MSC Malaysia AsiaPacific ICT Alliance Awards (APCITA) 2020 Awards, NexODN International Sdn Bhd was a Merit recipient in the Technology Category (Artificial Intelligence) for the project entitled “World-First Artificial Intelligence SEO Machine Learning & Deep Learning Expert System”.
NexMind AI (formerly known as NexODN International) is the proud recipient of RM2 million CIP Accelerate DeepTech grant from Cradle Fund. The company is required to expand its operations in three overseas markets. To-date, NexMind AI has presence in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Aside from Southeast Asia, the company also plans to expand its operations in North America and Europe, under the SAAS (Software as a Service) model.
The company hopes to raise USD5 million in funds by 2021, and by 2022, it aims to be listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, Toronto Stock Exchange or Singapore Stock Exchange.
“I have always wanted to establish a homegrown technology provider and hire local talents, and export our products into overseas markets,” says Francis.
In sharing his thoughts on the Malaysian landscape, Francis says that the education blueprint of the country needs to include Big Data and AI as part of its curriculum in order to drive the momentum of this industry in Malaysia and catch up with the rest of the global players.
