Notion AI next for project management and knowledge base segments: CEO and co-founder Ivan Zhao

Ivan Zhao, CEO and co-founder of Notion in Hyderabad.

Productivity and note-taking web application Notion will be working on introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to their knowledge base and project management segment, Ivan Zhao, CEO and co-founder of Notion said in an exclusive interview with Moneycontrol.

In February, Notion introduced Notion AI for their writing segment, and it has been helping users by generating instant summary from notes, improving writing and more.

"So we’re one of the first major AI writing products on the market. We did a public release almost before everybody else. But we’re not stopping here. The writing is just the first product. As I mentioned, documents and notes are our first use case. (We have other use cases such as) knowledge base and product management. We need to bring AI to those use cases," Zhao told Moneycontrol.

Also read: India one of our most important regions, Hyderabad our only engineering office outside US: Notion CEO Ivan Zhao

Zhao said this in response to a query over how the company is planning to deal with competition with other AI-based productivity management platforms such as recently launched Microsoft Loop.

Since launching Notion AI to all users, the company has noticed that people have been using the AI product majorly to improve their writing, and also for translations. "We are surprised by how popular it (translation) is with business users, especially European and Asian users," Zhao said.

Notion's knowledge base user case, which is one of the segments that Zhao is keen to bring AI to, helps customers with creating a library of information that's relevant to an organisation.

"Internal knowledge bases contain all the resources staff will need to onboard and collaborate across teams, including policy documents, client or production information, and tool logins. Teams can then create external knowledge bases to make information easier for customers and prospects to find," a Notion blog said.

Similarly, the other use case that company aims to bring AI to -- project management, can be used to manage any type of project, regardless of the team or size, its website said.

Founded in 2013 by Zhao and Simon Last, Notion gained popularity during the pandemic, with users taking an immediate liking to their minimalist design, their flexibility in use cases and so on. They last raised a $235 million funding in 2021, which took their valuation to $10 billion.

Since then they acquired three companies, including India-based Automate.io, which also marked the beginning of their India operations, with an office in Hyderabad. Uday Bhaskar, a former engineer head at Uber Eats heads the Hyderabad office as the head of engineering in India.