Across cities and villages in emerging markets like India, Nigeria, and Brazil, the Internet is helping millions of people and businesses unlock unprecedented opportunities. Today, more people in these markets are buying and selling online, participating in the global economy, and gaining access to tools that improve their quality of life. According to the World Bank, GDP growth is directly correlated with the rapid expansion of internet access. In Kenya, for example, internet-enabled technologies like mobile money have successfully lifted many people out of poverty.
While the rapid growth of the internet and mobile phone adoption across these markets has opened a world of possibilities, the potential is not being fully utilized. To fully maximize this potential, we must move beyond just increasing online connectivity to ensuring that everyone can easily use the tools afforded by the digital economy.
AI-powered Smart Search is key to driving digital adoption in emerging markets.
The internet is like a vast ocean of information, but without any direction or context, it’s easy to get completely lost. For most internet users, the most common starting point for getting anything done online starts with a search, with Internet use data showing that there are an astonishing 8.5 billion searches made on Google every single day.
However, this search process isn’t always straightforward and intuitive, especially for new internet users. Traditional search models rely heavily on specific keywords; you need to know the exact phrase or term to get the desired results. But if you’re a small business owner in a rural Indian village or a farmer in Nigeria that is new to the internet and unfamiliar with the right words to use in English or even your local language, what happens then? This barrier can turn the internet, a tool meant to simplify life, into a quite complicated endeavor
This is where AI-powered ‘Smart search’ can benefit new internet users across emerging markets and become a game changer for digital adoption. Unlike traditional keyword-based searches, ‘smart search’ goes beyond keywords to understand the context of the search and provides information that matches your needs rather than just your words.
In addition, AI-powered smart search can comprehend requests in multiple languages and provide results in the same language – a significant advantage for users in emerging markets where English may not be the first language. For example, Nigeria, which accounts for a significant portion of mobile internet usage in Sub-saharan Africa, has over 500 languages, yet, very little digital content is available in those languages. An AI-powered smart search tool that understands these dialects and provides results in the same would help increase digital adoption in these markets.
We’re building AI Smart Search into our Intelligent Open Commerce Platform to help retailers and merchants in emerging markets.
Across emerging markets, a significant portion of all consumer goods trading is done via the informal market by small retailers and merchants, many of whom do not have access to or are not well-versed with technology. This traditional trading model is slow, inefficient, and costly for both merchants and consumer brands. To overcome these challenges, RedCloud has built an Intelligent Open Commerce Platform. From the manufacturer to the final retailer, we have huge parts of the supply chain in emerging markets covered.
We are currently integrating AI-powered smart search into our Intelligent Open Commerce Platform, fundamentally changing how small business owners interact with digital platforms. By fusing our product search function with Large Language Models (LLMs), users will be able to search using natural language without having to depend exclusively on specific keywords. Whether a retailer is looking for a particular product or trying to understand the payment and delivery terms, our smart search function will be able to filter through all the product offerings and deliver accurate and useful results.
More importantly, our AI-powered Smart Search will work with voice search in local languages and is a game-changer for thousands of retailers in rural areas who may not have a good command of English. They can simply dictate their detailed requests in their local language and get tailored responses to their requests instantly.
This Smart Search feature will reduce the time spent on sourcing and ordering products by up to 80%, freeing up the time that local retailers can do what they do best – trade and grow their businesses.
To learn more about RedCloud’s Intelligent Open Commerce platform and how we’re using AI to unlock the future of commerce across emerging markets, please visit www.redcloudtechnology.com.
