Pakistani startup SurveyAuto has received an investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for developing innovative Artificial Intelligence models for data collection.
This is the first ever direct investment made by the renowned charitable foundation in a Pakistani startup.
SurveyAuto plans to use artificial intelligence to take the $75 billion dollar market research industry.
The company will use an app to crowd source data collection by applying recent breakthroughs in the artificial intelligence and machine learning domains of computer science.
The startup will depend on local users in a relevant area to report data using their smartphones rather than relying on expensive dedicated teams. According to experts in the field, this will make it the Uber market research “What Uber has done to taxi services, they are aiming to do the same to traditional market research companies like Neilsen and Gallup”.
Founder and CEO of SurveyAuto Dr Umar Saif said “SurveyAuto uses a crowd sourcing model and relies on machine learning to decide who reports data, where it is collected, and when and how often it is reported. This reduces cost and minimizes human errors”.
SurveyAuto uses machine learning on satellite imagery and open street maps to accurately identify survey targets, tracks and monitors enumerators in real-time using smartphone applications, and uses speech and image analysis to automatically analyze the quality of collected data.
Dr Umar Saif informed about functioning of the app that “SurveyAuto uses a crowd sourcing model and relies on machine learning to decide who reports data, where it is collected, and when and how often it is reported. This reduces cost and minimizes human errors”.
He also thanked Bill Gates for showing his interest to invest in the company.
SurveyAuto is working on several global projects with the World Bank, Innovations in Poverty Action (IPA), ITA, UNESCO and other development organizations.