The clock struck 20:00 in the capital city of Male’, a father checked his number of the day with his expense-tracking ‘Heydha’ App. A couple of blocks over, recent college graduate sat finishing up a simple form on the JobCenter website, she will soon be matched with an employer and job posting most suited for her. In the next room, her aunt listens to the day’s news from ‘Mihaaru’ articles with their text-to- speech feature. On a completely different island, a couple sits together delighting and marveling at the rapidly typing computer. A contract for their business was being produced before their very eyes – and all of this in a language so “rare” that it is only spoken and written by the 500,000 or so people that occupy the string of islands in the Indian Ocean.

Such is the reach of the highest-achieving tech company in the Maldives; Javaabu Pvt Ltd. We at Kaleo Media sat down with its founders, CTO Arushad Ahmed as well as CEO Mohamed Jailam to chat about their humble origins as well as the new AI Chatbot on everyone’s lips; Dhivehi GPT by Javaabu

The journey to this point today – and all the wonderful things they will do, began at the hallowed halls of Majeedhiyya School back in 2007 when a friendship was formed between two boys. Fast forward to 2011 and fresh off the white and blue CHSE uniform, both friends began supplementing their interests and penchant for self-learning with a venture into the business world.

As Jailam put it, “We had been learning from whatever resources we could find and making small websites for requests on platforms like ibay”. While Jailam was initially more interested in graphics and marketing, Arushad had his sights set on developing. They consider their website for the Maldivian Red Crescent as their first ever “official” project. A project which was coordinated across time zones with Arushad still completing his Bachelors in Malaysia. A flurry of circumstances and both friends found themselves at the precipice when they were finally in the same country at the same time back in 2016. Initially as a sole proprietorship under Arushad, it was later transformed into a company with the official addition of Jailam in 2017.

As for the name, it emerged out of a Facebook post seeking recommendations for such a business with one of the comments suggesting “Suvaalu” (Question) as an option. Arushad recalled, “No one wants questions. Everyone wants answers to their questions and so Javaabu (Answer) came about”.

It all started when the idea came about to “stitch” Open AI’s Chat GPT and Google Translate’s Dhivehi language option. Open AI was having people make it type up grocery lists and writing reports by November 2022 while Google Translate had incorporated the Dhivehi language earlier in May of that year.

For most of us, a “weekend project” not spent lazing around might involve reorganizing a closet or decluttering our backpack. For Javaabu CTO Arushad, who was also tackling the tasks of completing his Masters in the UK, that weekend’s project involved a game-changer.

He recalled, “I wondered, just for proof-of-concept, exactly how feasible it is to combine Chat GPT and Google Translate. So there was no code back then, just essentially a translation of Chat GPT’s response and vice versa with a python script. Then I posted on X about it”.

There was more demand for the experimental ”Dhivehi GPT” than previously realized. And so Dhivehi GPT had some work done with prompt engineering as well as fixing responses that were not friendly with Maldivian culture. For those not clear on what prompt engineering is, Jailam explained, “It is essentially asking the right questions and getting the answer from a generative AI”.

While Javaabu was busying themselves with different projects and Dhivehi GPT was being updated rapidly on the side without concerted efforts to market or get the word out. Jailam noted, “It had been growing organically and we weren’t keeping track of usage”.

“We suddenly found that the allocated usage for each month was maxed out right at the beginning”, noted Arushad. “It was then, and also through the increasing requests of users that we found that there was a real need for its services. Jailam added. “We didn’t even expect people to actually pay initially,”.

Arushad said, “We found that Claude 3.5 had a really good grasp of Dhivehi. Maybe it doesn’t have the full knowledge but the (language) generation is pretty good”. This was especially exciting for Dhivehi aficionado Jailam, whose digital library Majalla.MV boasts the largest collection of mostly Dhivehi magazines in the country.

He remarked, “We then started paying attention to Dhivehi GPT’s usage patterns like weekday usage as well as translation prompts. We wanted to manage user-specific cases and tweak things a bit to launch an update”. So it was then on yet another weekend when it was Jailam this time, who took the final step. “One night I thought to myself that this really needs to be oit there. I was so excited about it so I coded and on Sunday morning I pushed the update and made a quick Facebook post saying there is a new release”.

Within a few days alone, Dhivehi GPT’s users increased up to five times its initial numbers and it was precisely the quality of the content that spread like wildfire.

Users were rushing to indulge in the payment plans offered by Dhivehi GPT where the first five questions of the month came for free. In addition to cutting down the time employees have to pore over contracts and proposals under dim lights at the office, Dhivehi GPT has packed on some creative juices with the new poetry features of “Raivaru” and “Lhen”.

“It is worth it as a business opportunity as well as an opportunity to serve our community” Jailam. “One thing I would really like to stress is that sustainability in these sorts of endeavors isn’t guaranteed by doing it only with the kindness of our hearts. Of Course we want to do every single thing we can to revive the Dhivehi language, but we are able to keep doing what we do by keeping an eye on the business perspective as well”.

As for the future, the sky’s the limit. Javaabu is currently working on reeling in the expertise of those in the field. For instance, consulting with the literary experts on the rules and guidelines for writing intricate Raivaru and Lhen and fine tuning responses. In addition to possible speech-to-text features that will surely revolutionize several fields such as journalism, Dhivehi GPT users will in the future be able to generate content such as reports with the mere upload of pdf documents.

Poised upon the integrity of wider impact and a serious role in the Maldivian community, Javaabu has only grown exponentially since those early days post- higher secondary school with two best friends. Many bigwigs in the industry can trace some of their beginnings back to the support and mentoring they received at Javaabu today. Javaabu and all of its work and aspirations are THE millennial and Gen Z dream. We can only wish this company the best in all their future endeavors.