1. We help internationals stay informed and included with their local society with a local news aggregator in English. Riedia is a state of the art AI-powered app, where internationals can read news from multiple trusted local newspapers, translated, summarised, and personalised for them. All in one place.
With us, internationals don’t have to go through all the paywalls and translation tools to stay informed and feel like locals. They can read short summaries of the top stories of their region and interests in their daily, customisable personal feed within the time of a fika.
2. It is hard for internationals to get informed and included in Sweden. Without a high level of Swedish, it is taxing for them to find and digest the local news and understand the local politics or what new development and changes are taking place in the city. In addition, there is a high subscription cost of local news, with an average of 2500 kr/year, and they have little information accessible about which newspaper to choose.
This problem is shared among around 300,000 foreign-born who do not speak Swedish and around 350,000 who speak Swedish as a second language. There are around 160,000 incoming international students and immigrants in Sweden every year, with a 5.8% growth rate. These are the people we can help include with our product. By helping them, we also contribute to a more inclusive society.
3: With our AI-powered app, internationals can read news from multiple trusted local newspapers, translated, summarised, and personalised for them. All in one place. With us, internationals don’t have to go through all the paywalls and translation tools to stay informed and feel like locals. They can read short summaries of the top stories of their region and interests in their daily, customisable personal feed within the time of a fika.
We plan to have three kinds of revenue. One is end-user subscriptions - we are developing three packages ranging from 20 to 150 kr/month based on the features. We plan to provide AI model services for newspapers. A few newspapers have shown interest in using our AI models on their platforms. We will also feature local businesses and events on our platform.
Currently, we have no operational costs thanks to the AWS credits provided by KTH Innovation, but in the future, our costs will be marketing, cloud computing, salaries, and R&D.
4: The initial spark was during a conversation we friends had about current events in Sweden, where Melker talked about the news he heard about and experienced, however none of the internationals had ever heard about the events. I am from Sweden. And it is such a shame that in this democratic country, famous for all its inclusiveness and effort for equality, if you don’t speak Swedish, you will have a very hard time understanding the local information and integrating in society. I really believe internationals deserve to have the necessary information no matter if the don't speak swedish.