Li Ka-shing bets on Hong Kong AI start-up that understands Chinese dialects

Fano Labs represents the latest artificial intelligence start-up to receive funding from Horizons Ventures, Li’s private investment arm

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This picture taken on November 12, 2013 shows workers checking the deliveries at an express delivery company in Beijing. Chinese shoppers spent a record 35.0 billion yuan (USD5.7 billion) at the country's biggest online marketplaces Tmall and Taobao, the two shopping platforms of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, on Singles' Day on November 11 – the festival created by e-tailers to persuade the loveless to console themselves with retail therapy – the state-run Economic Information Daily reported. Photo: Agence France-Presse

Published: 8:00am, 13 Dec 2017Updated: 10:55pm, 13 Dec 2017

Billionaire Li Ka-shing is betting on a little-known Hong Kong start-up that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to sieve through tens of thousands of daily call-centre conversations conducted in China’s major dialects.

Fano Labs, which is a specialist in natural language processing (NLP) technology, received last month an undisclosed amount of funding from Li’s private investment arm Horizons Ventures that is expected to drive its expansion plans in China’s call centre industry, including setting up new offices and research facilities.

Company chief executive Miles Wen, 28, said Fano Labs – which already processes calls in English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Sichuanese for several clients – was keen to add more dialects to meet demand in the world’s second-largest economy.

“If someone from Sichuan is calling his local telecoms company, he’ll likely speak in Sichuanese first and not Mandarin unless they’re asked to switch,” said Wen, estimating that about 60 per cent of call-centre engagements are conducted in dialect.

Other traditional Chinese dialects include Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka and Shanghainese.

China’s call centres are forecast to have the capacity to answer about two million calls at any given moment by 2020, up from an estimated 580,000 back in 2012, according to Shenzhen-based consulting firm AskCI.