Bhutan’s first AI startup, NoMindBhutan is student-led and already serves the kingdom’s airline and banks

Two computer science engineering students at Thimphu’s Royal University of Bhutan are pioneering the AI industry with an AI business start-up called NoMindBhutan. The duo operates in a college dorm and has employed five more students to work on the venture.

Twenty-three-year-old Ugyen Dendup and 19-year-old Jamphel Yigzin Samdrup unveiled a new AI-powered venture last year, the only AI business start-up in Bhutan. The duo will graduate in two years but have already started to apply their technical knowledge to develop their AI business, NoMindBhutan. The two young, enterprising engineers-to-be started the venture with proceeds from a hackathon they won, using the prize money as seed capital to kickstart the AI business.

NoMindBhutan signs its first client, the Bhutan National Bank

The team had a tough time landing their first client, but they managed to earn credibility and settled for a deal with the Bhutan National Bank in August 2023. The deal with the banking institution boosted the start-up’s credibility, allowing Dendup and Yigzin to convince more clients to pay for the chatbots. According to Dendup, their institution also encouraged them to pitch more and submit more proposals, which helped them find more clients.

Since then, they have added more clients, including the country’s national airline carrier, Drukair-Royal Bhutan Airlines, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, and Employment, the National Land Commission, and the Bhutan National Digital Identity (NDI) program.

The astonishing innovation from these students is encouraging. While countries like the U.S. and China have channeled millions into private firms for AI development in the last decade, places like Bhutan hardly see any government support for such projects.

NoMindBusiness is an AI-focused company that creates and deploys customized AI chatbots for institutions. The chatbots are similar to the infamous ChatGPT. However, the team trained the AI models powering the chatbots with specific information that the client provided or one sourced from the client’s website. The company’s chatbots were, therefore, more accurate and more specific to the client’s needs.

NoMindBhutan aims to run its own natural language processing and own its servers

In July, Dendup told Rest of the World, a South Asian news outlet, that the initial reason why they founded the business was to make AI tools more accessible to companies and institutions in Bhutan. The founder also mentioned that the team has a dream of owning their own server and running their own natural language processing.

The startup is facing a myriad of challenges. Bhutan has a population of less than 1 million people, making it hard for businesses to thrive and grow. The idea of chatbots in the country may not necessarily meet huge demand, and according to start-up analytics firm Tracxn, there are only 15 tech start-ups in the country. 

Geographical challenges also face the company. Bhutan is also not on Microsoft’s list of countries served by the Azure cloud, and Stripe is also not accessible in the country. NoMindBhutan uses Amazon’s AWS cloud storage in Singapore. The team sends funds to their Australian friends who renew their Amazon server fees on their behalf.

NoMindBhutan’s team works in the college’s dormitory, where they improvise a workstation using makeshifts of wooden tables pushed together. When the college curriculum breaks, the team rents a small workspace to continue operations until school resumes.