UST Global wins Microsoft’s AI application award for social impact

Digital transformation solutions company UST Global has won 2020 the 'Most Innovative AI (Artificial Intelligence) Application Award for Societal Impact' from Microsoft. The AI Awards 2.0 is an initiative open to all Microsoft customers and partners who foster AI-led innovations to deliver meaningful impact. In 2019, UST Global had won an award for 'Empowering Employees with AI' from Microsoft for delivering an AI-powered personal assistant to each employee.

The award marks industry appreciation of the company's AI capabilities to build innovative products. It partnered with EmancipAction to create a human-centric platform to collate information and provide meaningful insights from a clinical research study conducted among highly traumatised children residing in Childcare Institutions in India.

Caregiver mobile app

It also developed the ‘Caregiver’ mobile application which provided the technical support to do victim identification, exclusion, pre-screening, baseline assessment, end-of-therapy assessments and follow-up assessments until they are ready to start a new life without fear and full of hope. The questionnaires, assessments and follow-up questions based on primary responses were supported by AI/ML (Machine Learning) technology.

Krishna Sudheendra, CEO, UST Global, said that the company had made numerous accomplishments over several years towards making technology more meaningful and useful for consumers and their end customers globally. "We have remained steadfast in our commitment to Transforming Lives by empowering companies and society and producing outstanding products and solutions that address the real market needs. We remain singularly focused on delivering fundamentally better AI experience that can be utilised by enterprises of any size and budget. This award is further validation that we are succeeding in our mission.”

Tackling human trafficking

Rohini Srivathsa, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India, said that AI could help us solve some of the world’s toughest challenges and work for the public good. "We believe in UST Global’ s approach to using technology against social evils such as human trafficking. The company’s goal to raise awareness and produce actionable insights with an AI-developed application that helps children impacted by human trafficking is truly laudable. It resonates with our commitment to providing technology and expertise to empower those working to solve humanitarian issues.”

UST Global offers AI, ML and Virtual Reality (VR) solutions in retail, financial services, healthcare, among others. Retail Business Services partnered with UST Global to develop frictionless store technology and AI/ML and purpose-built smartphone applications that enable customers to shop from a small-format store in a matter of seconds. It created LookyLoopz, an immersive learning platform that allows teachers to teach the next generation of students by engaging them with them through VR learning modules.