TOUCAN

AI-powered Ecommerce Assist

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Inspiration & Problem Statement

Today, an increasing number of micro and small businesses are recognizing the importance of establishing an online presence to expand their reach globally. However, delving into the realm of online business requires extensive effort to learn, understand, analyze, and compare effective strategies. Furthermore, tackling international logistics, taxes, and regulations can be a daunting task. Typically, individuals have two options: either pay exorbitant fees for consulting services or invest countless hours scouring the internet, sifting through various websites, documentation, and service providers, in hopes of grasping the fundamentals of a specific domain. Unfortunately, many existing technologies, tools, and applications cater primarily to tech-savvy individuals who are familiar with digital platforms. However, non-tech-savvy small business owners, as well as individuals with visual impairments and cognitive disabilities, face significant barriers due to the lack of startup capital, limited web accessibility, and insufficient integration of information across platforms. Consequently, accessing valuable knowledge and guidance inexpensively and effortlessly becomes a formidable challenge.

Goals & Objectives

The primary objective of our project is to empower small business owners by offering a more accessible and adaptable tool. This tool will enable them to swiftly and cost-effectively navigate the intricacies of specific domains, such as exporting logistics, without the need to engage expensive experts or comb through numerous web pages that may not comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Target Audience

  • Micro and small business owners who are non tech-savvy and have limited startup capital
  • People with visual impairment and cognitive disabilities and have difficulties navigating websites

What it does

Toucan is a web service that offers AI-powered consulting tools, specifically designed to assist micro and small business owners, as well as individuals with visual impairments and cognitive disabilities, in accessing relevant and specific information about exporting logistics easily and affordably. Through a chatbot-like interface that accepts both typed and voice commands, users can receive comprehensive text or voice-based analysis and information tailored to their needs. This service utilizes cutting-edge technologies, including machine learning, natural language processing, GPT-3.5, vector embeddings, text-to-speech, and speech recognition, enabling efficient navigation and interaction with web information, ultimately saving users valuable time.

In contrast to traditional logistics consulting services, which typically charge between $50 and $300 per hour, not including potential minimum project fees or service retention fees, Toucan provides alternative and cost-effective channels for business owners or individuals who lack technical expertise and experience in international business. It facilitates effective knowledge acquisition and quick comparison of available logistics handling services in the market. Users could use the shipping rate calculator feature to compare rates among different service providers. Additionally, Toucan supports 133 different languages, allowing users to interact in their local language through text and voice formats.

Furthermore, recent research by Auchenbach (2022) highlights a higher prevalence of entrepreneurship and self-employment among people with disabilities compared to those without. However, many of them face limitations in startup capital and lack customized services that cater to their unique challenges and needs. Specifically, individuals with visual impairments may struggle with typing and reading, necessitating voice-based or auditory support. Similarly, individuals with cognitive disabilities such as dyslexia, ADHD, mental retardation, or brain injuries encounter difficulties navigating websites with complex layouts, interaction models, and non-adaptive visual designs. Excessive moving animations and insuppressible audio players further compound these challenges. In contrast, Toucan offers an intuitive and inclusive interface, presenting a minimalistic one-stop-shop consulting experience without overwhelming users cognitively.

Moreover, Toucan fine-tunes its AI model and converts documents, Wikipedia articles, and website information in the field of international trade, shipping logistics, customs duties, export, and international business into text vector embeddings using OpenAI's embedding model. This advanced approach allows Toucan to provide highly accurate and up-to-date results specifically tailored to exporting logistics, surpassing the capabilities of general AI tools.

Try it out yourself!

Visit https://toucan-ai.onrender.com/

Key Features

  • Speak with our AI consultant using natural language!
  • Shipping Calculator for you to estimate your shipping rate with real rates from USPS, UPS, Fedex
  • Support for 133 Language powered by Google Cloud Translate.
  • Use your preferred language and see translated responses from the AI consultant, communicate with Speech-to-text, and play back the response (Text to Speech)
  • Web App so it's accessible from any device with a web browser (Android, iOS, Desktop, etc)

Technologies used to build Toucan AI

Technical challenges

Toucan provides a real Shipping Calculator for you to estimate your shipping rate with real rates from USPS, UPS, Fedex. Currently there's a limitation in the Shipping API, we use which only allows the sender country to be US, but the destination country can be any place.

Since it takes time to scrape, ingest and generate vector embeddings, due to the time constraint of the hackathon, we didn't have time to fully index all the sites/documents/etc that we would have wanted in the indexed knowledge base (vector embeddings). Our AI consultant performs quite well and we can see the benefit of this indexed database in the ability of our AI powered consultant to provide sources and more relevant context.

Our main source of scrapped site is thousands of articles from Wikipedia. All the main category and up to 5 levels deep traversal of sub-categories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Export https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Import

Some resources we would have wanted to index as well:

What's next for TOUCAN

In addition to its core functionalities, Toucan is designed to be expandable and scalable to other domains essential for e-commerce and digital trade. This means that the solution can seamlessly accommodate areas such as supply chain management, business models, customer relationships, market research, and international laws. By catering to a wide range of topics, Toucan delivers comprehensive and customized assistance to meet the diverse needs of businesses in the digital trade’s landscape.

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