Egypt’s Elves App is Helping Online Users through Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

In Egypt, a lot of people find it difficult to run errands and get things done, especially in the crowded city of Cairo. Karim Elsahy innovated Elves in 2015 to make it easier for Egypt’s online users to accomplish their daily life requirements. According to Elsahy, the main aim of the app is to add value to each user who is seeking to find a helper in his or her daily life demands, which can sometimes hardly be done on busy working days.

Elves is a tech-driven virtual assistant app that provides online Elves (helpers) who reply to any user’s messages on requests for services ranging from booking, purchasing or even inquiring about a missing information. Egypt’s Elves uses a “human in the loop” methodology to drive machine learning and build AI; with the chat-based platform allowing users to talk to a “super human assistant” to do anything, anywhere in the world, for free.

“The services we provide are many. We are not only offering the services of booking and purchasing, but we provide many other services users demand from the team online. Also, we are keen on doing this by entering into partnerships with big providers for each service” said Elsahy, the founder of Elves.

The app came late in 2015 during the Christmas vacation, when most of the businesses were slowing down in the US. That gave a push to Elsahy and his co-founders to launch an app that helps assist online users through the messaging service.

The service is currently operating throughout the globe, with 30 elves being the main warriors behind the scene. “the team is not big because the reply service is operating through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning” Elsahy said, adding that these two are the main tools used by the Elves team to handle large numbers of messages sent on a daily basis.

The startup raised US$2 million in seed funding right at the close of 2017, giving it a huge boost to get to work in 2018 – which it has done, expanding to the US. Elves has opened an office in Los Angeles with an initial team of six, which is focused exclusively on conquering the US market. We look forward to updates.

Elsahy recently revealed that the startup is willing to enter into more partnerships with more large service providers to enhance its services and looking forward to penetrate sectors of food and e-commerce.