JDF soldier wins UTech pitch competition with AI business

With a desire to improve customer service in Jamaica, Andre Thomas, an entrepreneur and Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) member, entered and emerged winner of the University of Technology (UTech) Technology Innovation Centre (TIC) ‘Know Your Numbers, Pitch for the Future’ competition.

The competition, staged in partnership with the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce, was held on April 20 at UTech, where Thomas pitched solutions from his registered business, called Axespire Solutions Limited, against five other businesses. 

He emerged the winner of a $500,000 cash prize from the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce.

Axespire Solutions Limited provides services for companies using language model artificial intelligence (AI)-driven solutions that do commands, appointment booking, questions and answers and basic customer service. The business was registered in 2014.  

“The main concept of my company is to improve customer service in Jamaica, because I have been a victim of poor customer service. The idea came across where the initial concept was to do a BPO (business process outsourcing). However, things didn’t go according to plan,” Thomas said.  

“In the interim, I realised that AI was becoming very advanced, so I started to look into AI, especially ChatGPT, and the concept where there would be a language model that is able to speak just as how a human can reason, really sparked my curiosity," the 28-year-old soldier added. 

Thomas also thought to himself that if he could create a voice model for ChatGPT that would be a milestone on his journey to improving customer service delivery in Jamaica. 

“So, I went into deep research about it, learning the various components. A year or so in, I put things together and built Yuh Chat. It’s an authentic AI where it would basically do tasks, just as how you would have a regular receptionist, for example, calling a doctor’s office to book an appointment,” Thomas noted. 

“If that office has the Yuh Chat system on their phone line, the AI would basically handle that call. The AI would go into the doctor’s calendar, look on their calendar, and take the information and come back to the caller and communicate the times. With confirmation from the caller, the doctor would get a notification of booking for that time,” Thomas explained. 

EXPANDING VOICE AGENT

Thomas pointed out that Yuh Chat is an entry level [model] and is the company’s flagship product. 

“I’m aiming to expand the voice agent model into various areas. I’m in the process of building out an AI system where it will be integrated into your security system. I’ve created it but I’m not ready to launch it yet. For instance, you would have security cameras around your property. I would basically put in the AI system which would monitor who is coming on the property,” Thomas said.

“If, for example, you restricted a particular area from any person apart from you to access that area, and someone decides to come and go around that area, the AI would analyse, recognise the person and call you to say there is someone on your property. The system would then ask if you want it to alert security or the police and, based on your instruction, it will either act or not,” he continued. 

The AI voice assistant was demoed at the Intelibus Hackathon earlier this year, but Axespire Solutions did not win. 

In addition to that idea, he is also thinking of going into hardware, where his AI design would check inventory.

With the $500,000 he copped from the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce and UTech’s TIC Know Your Numbers, Pitch for the Future competition, he intends to employ or contract like-minded individuals to build out his AI voice assistants, do sales, do marketing and better operations. “Those are the areas I am now weak in,” he said. 

Winning the first-place prize was not easy for him. He had leadership training for work with the JDF and little time to prepare for his pitch. 

“The pitch did not go according to plan because I didn’t get a chance to really practise, because I am currently serving in the military. So, based on that, my time allocation was very tight. But, based on the pitch, I think the judges realised that what I’m creating solves a real issue. They saw the value in it. The fact that I had a working model to demonstrate, I think that was one of the primary factors that helped me to win the competition,” Thomas said. 

Although not a student of UTech, he did an entrepreneurship course with the TIC, which introduced the Know Your Numbers Workshop, which led him to the finals of the competition. 

Thomas is a proud product of the parish of Clarendon and Bustamante High School, and said he always wanted to become an entrepreneur, because he liked solving problems from his childhood days.