India's AI enabled MyGov Corona Helpdesk wins two global awards

The artificial intelligence (AI) enabled ‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk has bagged two awards under the categories ‘Best Innovation for Covid-19 -- Society Peoples Choice and ‘Covid-19 Overall Winner at the recently held CogX 2020, which is a prestigious global leadership summit and festival of AI and Emerging Technology held annually in London.

The awards were won by the Technical Partner of MyGov, JioHaptik Technologies Limited.

Haptik is a part of the Reliance group of companies, who acquired a majority stake in the company in a $100 million deal in April 2019.

Haptik is one of the world's largest Conversational AI companies, having reached over 100 million devices, and processed over 3 billion conversations to date. The company's intelligent virtual assistant solutions enable Fortune 500 brands globally to enhance customer experience while saving costs and increasing sales.

MyGov is the world's largest citizen engagement platform, which facilitates two-way communication between the government and the citizens and facilitates participatory governance in India, the world's largest democracy. In the fight against Covid-19, MyGov, JioHaptik Technologies Limited and WhatsApp team collaborated to develop AI enabled ‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk' in the record time of 5 days, including the weekend.

‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk' demonstrated the true Public, Private and Public Partnership (PPPP), wherein, Citizen centric services were provided by MyGov, the state-of-the-art technological solution including infrastructure were designed, developed, and deployed by JioHaptik Technologies Limited, and ideas given by public were factored-in on daily basis to improve the services and solution.

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the ‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk' has received more than 76 million messages and processed over 41 million conversations. With the active involvement of Government, JioHaptik and WhatsApp, this chatbot has continues to help over 28 million Indians stay informed while providing a platform to get latest information on Covid-19, curb rumors and misinformation.

Abhishek Singh, CEO, MyGov, said, "Right communication strategy and leveraging technology is an important strategy to deal with the pandemic. Digital India has made solid foundation. It has been the endeavour of Digital India and its initiative MyGov to act as a bridge between citizens and government and ensure citizen participation and information dissemination on platforms that most citizens use."

"Towards this objective, ‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk', developed in partnership with JioHaptik and WhatsApp, has really helped improve our outreach and engagement. The chatbot engages citizens in user friendly manner with personalized information and updates on COVID-19, government advisories, advice of medical experts, stories of COVID19 survivors, myth busters and musical interludes through through the positive harmonies campaign that also ensures that people are relaxed and stress free," Singh added.

CEO & Co-Founder of Haptik, Aakrit Vaish, said, "What started as an initiative to spread the right information has today become a world-renowned technological solution that continues to assist millions. The Government's support was a key driver in building the ‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk' in record time and being recognised at a global technology summit further bolsters our belief that technology is meant to benefit society in the long run. We would also like to acknowledge our healthcare professionals as the real winners of this honour who are battling this pandemic 24/7."

CogX is one of the world's largest events on AI, held annually in London with over 15,000 participants in attendance from the highest levels of business, government, industry, and research. The Cogx Awards are given out to the best-of-the-best in AI and emerging technologies across the world.

After a rigorous evaluation, ‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk' was chosen among hundreds of entries that made a difference to society during the pandemic. Following a live digital pitch in front of a worldwide audience and esteemed judges, team JioHaptik was awarded the honour for providing AI enabled technological solution for ‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk' that has helped safeguard lives amid a pandemic.