In a New Start-Up Age, Aider Leads the Pack

Don Whiteside

Head of Emerging Technologies

ANZi 

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to reshape businesses around the world, there has been a clear recognition of the need to embrace technology, innovate and do things differently.

From cash flow to sales, staffing to accounting needs, rapid changes in business dynamics have made the need for real-time insights into businesses’ performance more important than ever.

Recognising this growing reality, ANZi Ventures - the investment arm of ANZ Banking Group - has this month made a significant investment in an Auckland artificial intelligence start-up called Aider.

The company’s app is a digital assistant for businesses, collating data from applications like Xero, Google Analytics, and Shopify, along with other data from social media, or even the news or weather.

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand how the business runs - even anticipate problems before they the happen – Aider can play a significant role in helping business managers and their financial advisors make informed decisions.

These instant insights – delivered via text or voice-to-text – can save valuable time, allowing owners to focus on other important aspects of running and growing their business.

“In many ways the world is only now waking up to the fact that data is the new oil.”

Don Whiteside, Head of Emerging Technologies, ANZi

While many innovative fintech start-ups have rightly identified niche opportunities to disrupt and improve the delivery of financial services, few have the level of trust or the customer base of existing banks.

With a proven record of looking after customers’ money, along with strong technical teams,  existing digital products and the capacity to meet regulatory requirements – banks are being recognised as the perfect partners for fintech start-ups.

ANZ’s investment in Aider allows the start -up to further develop and innovate its offering.

Initially ANZ will refer customers to Aider, but in time, it could potentially integrate Aider’s software into ANZ's own offerings in a way that benefits business customers.

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Despite the COVID-19 lockdowns and the uncertainty and disruption to business, 2020 has seen continuing strong investment activity in start-ups in New Zealand, with ANZ’s investment in Aider just one of a number of similar deals.

PwC’s November 2020 Startup Investment magazine noted that 2020 was likely to see more than NZD$100m of investment going into start-ups in New Zealand, on par with previous years.

It recorded NZD$33.6m of start-up investment in the first half of 2020, with 42% of this focussed on “SaaS” or Software as a Service technology.

Even before Covid-19 accelerated the pace of change, the global market for SaaS – cloud-based software systems for companies – has been growing rapidly, and is expected to be worth more than NZD$317 billion by 2022.

Paying a subscription to access an application over the internet – often through a web browser – rather than having to host it on a company’s own servers, enables businesses of all sizes to access powerful software with minimal upfront costs.

Small companies can now access software and insights that were once only accessible by large corporations.

In many ways the world is only now waking up to the fact that data is the new oil.

Cloud-based systems like these are expected to become increasingly popular, especially in these uncertain economic times as we experience the financial fallout from the global pandemic.

Software systems like Aider can adapt quickly to dynamic business conditions and are capable of rapidly re-tooling their services to meet changes in customers’ needs or regulations, competitive rivalry or changing device or internet usage.

Start-ups that demonstrate adaptability and agility, while staying focused on their particular niche or objectives, will see success in what is a new and exciting start-up age.

The pandemic has highlighted the need for businesses to have digital offerings, while the combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning and voice assistants like Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant make these services increasingly easy to use and accessible globally.

Previous financial crises have shown us that innovation is often borne out of economic uncertainty and there are clear indications the disruption caused by Covid-19 will have the same effect.

Start-ups in New Zealand look to benefit from the brain gain of returning Kiwis, often with extensive global start-up experience, while also being able to make the most of a local investment climate eager to back and help develop these new technologies.

The export of software and services was worth over NZD$2 billion to New Zealand in 2019, up 47% on 2017.

It is clear that with the right support and investment, start-ups like Aider have the potential to play an exciting and vital role in New Zealand’s economic revival.

This article first appeared in the New Zealand Herald on December 4th 2020