“A company is like a seed. You can plant the seed in strong and fertile soil and it [will] grow strong and healthy. And we found that fertile soil for TAIGER here.” – Sinuhé Arroyo

Academic-turned-entrepreneur

What started as a farm in Austria—which Sinuhé thought he would move on from once established in a couple of years—soon became 10 years on a rollercoaster journey. TAIGER’s birth was a textbook case of technology transfer from academia to business when Founder and CEO Sinuhé took some of the research that he had done during his PhD in Computer Science (Semantic Technology) at The University of Innsbruck and started building a product. Because of his strong academic background, the transition to run a business was not easy. However, when he took up the Executive MBA Program from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business from 2009 to 2011, that helped him piece the puzzle together.

TAIGER’s old office, then known as Playence.

With the mission to free the human intellect, TAIGER began with the development of a semantic search engine—Omnitive Search—capable of understanding any type of document, whether in audio or text format. Next was a humanistic virtual assistant—Omnitive Converse—capable of understanding context and performing transactions. And finally, our flagship product, Omnitive Extract, which is an intelligent information extraction and processing tool.

However, the expansion of TAIGER’s suite of products didn’t happen within as few years as Sinuhé had expected to spend on this startup. As TAIGER grew and attempted to scale, it set up an office in Spain (Sinuhé’s home country), and then tried growing in the U.S. in 2013. Unfortunately, that proved a huge challenge for TAIGER.

“We were in the U.S. for two years and then we learned a big lesson as well. We failed miserably in the U.S. We sold nothing.” – Sinuhé

A new home for TAIGER

However, that didn’t stop Sinuhé and partner Carlos de la Vega. Instead, they decided to look globally and examine where growth was happening, and in 2015, they made the move to venture into Singapore.

2015 was a great year for TAIGER. Rising from the crumbs of what happened in the U.S., TAIGER secured tenders from Singapore’s Housing Development Board (HDB), Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) and then the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). TAIGER had found its fertile soil in Singapore. The government and our partners here have been providing tremendous support for TAIGER’s growth as we continue to serve our clients, not just by helping them optimise their operational inefficiencies but also empowering them to provide the best possible experiences for their customers. 

“The team at TAIGER represent some of the most professional partners I have worked with. Otkritie had high expectations to be a customer-centric bank with a digitalisation vision. Yet, TAIGER was able to listen, understand and exceedingly deliver. I believe that this successful project with TAIGER simply marks the beginning of a long-term digital augmentation partnership with Otkritie.” – Vasiliy Uvarov, Bank Otkritie FC

From 2015 till now, TAIGER has established itself within the Public Sector, Financial Services Industry and continues to grow steady roots across other sectors such as the Education and Healthcare sector. 

“We’ve grown more in the past five years than the five years before, and for me, the best part is still ahead of us. It’s still up and coming.” – Sinuhé