True Digital Group (TDG), the business unit launched by True Corporation, a leading telecom conglomerate in Thailand, has created an analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) platform to offer new business applications to enterprises, in collaboration with software company Databricks.
True Corporation, is a joint venture between Charoen Pokphand Group and Telenor. Its mobile services operation is the third-largest in Thailand. It also owns Thailand's largest cable TV operator, True Visions, and broadband service provider True Online.
True Corporation has an estimated mobile customer base of 55 million mobile subscribers, five million broadband connections and 3.2 million pay-TV subscribers.
The True Analytics platform uses data from the company's large consumer database to create AI-driven solutions covering advertising, credit risk, and business insights for external customers.
TDG’s chief analytics and AI officer, Pedro Uria Recio, told a Databricks Webinar that the company was creating a number of applications by transforming, anonymising, and visualising data in powerful ways for its business customers to better engage with consumers and prospects.
Databricks has enabled the True Analytics data platform framework to migrate from on-premise Hadoop to cloud-based platforms. It has replaced projects like Jupyter, Apache Airflow, Presto and Hive with Databricks.
“We just finalised the migration to Databricks and Google Cloud, estimating around 15 percent cost savings this year,” Recio said.
It reportedly has migrated 3 petabytes of data, over 600 datasets and 200 pipelines.
Recio said the whole process has taken “eight months” from preparing the cloud when POCs migrate pipelines and products to onboarding the users to the new platform and finally, commissioning the TDG’s servers.
Enterprise solutions
True Analytics said it creates “unique” solutions for enterprises on Databricks from analysis to business impact with a dense database of over 30 million customers, segmented with more than 400 attributes, including detailed demographics, geographical and mobility tags, behavioural segmentation, and product interest labels.
For instance, the AI platform on Databricks has enabled a project by TDG that could bring in over 900 leads for one of its clients within the first month of implementation.
TDG also offers tailored credit risk solutions using micro-segmentation labels and telecom payment information to model clients' creditworthiness. It helps businesses to identify the customer’s risk profiles for financial offerings like personal loans, credit cards, and insurance packages.
We could offer advanced customer intelligence solutions to drive actionable decisions, Recio said.
One of its insight solutions enables enterprises to identify the best for new points-of-sales or critical micro-markets for their products based on localised customer segmentation.
Speaking on the firm’s venture to the cloud, Recio said TDG wants to pursue building products that will improve over time.
Leveraging Databricks, we offer solutions as a software company to external clients rather than just serving the needs of our parent company as an internal analytics team, he concluded.
