Power the little guy's business

Background

A one-person business is the owner, the cashier, customer service, the accountant and the delivery department, all at once. The home-baker taking orders on chat, the hawker who wants to sell sauces online, the student with a side hustle: they lose hours every week to replies, invoices, stock counts and paperwork instead of making the thing they sell.

The customers are just across the Causeway, or a short flight away. They message in English, Malay, Chinese, Thai or Bahasa Indonesia. Selling to them means handling languages, payments and shipping forms that a one-person business has no time for.

Helping small businesses trade globally is where Alibaba began, and it's still central to what Alibaba Cloud does in Southeast Asia. A lot of you are side-hustlers yourselves, so build the teammate you'd want.

Who you are designing for

Micro-businesses with one to three people: hawkers, home-based food businesses, online sellers, small makers and service providers. They work from a phone, between other jobs, often in a language other than English. They aren't short of ideas; they're short of time.

Pick a direction

Choose one, or combine them:

1. Go online and sell across borders. Help a hawker or home-baker take orders from customers in other countries, with customer chat that works in each customer's language.
2. An AI operations teammate. For a one-person business: send invoices, keep inventory up to date, and reply to customers without the owner stopping work.
3. A micro-exporter helper. Take the pain out of cross-border payments, delivery and the paperwork that comes with them.

What makes it stand out

• It takes action. Judges will ask "does it do something, or just answer a question?" An agent that sends the invoice beats a chatbot that explains how to write one.
• It speaks Southeast Asia. Working in at least one Southeast Asian language besides English earns a scoring bonus. Qwen3 covers 119 languages and dialects.
• It fits where the owner already is. On their phone, inside the chat apps they already use, in a minute between customers.

Things to think about

• Mistakes cost real money. Which actions need the owner's confirmation first? Payments? Refunds? Promises about delivery dates?
• Trust. Customers and owners need to know when they're talking to an AI, and how to reach a human.
• Running costs. A tiny business can't pay enterprise prices. Keep your cloud and model usage lean.
• Rules across borders. Help with forms, but be careful about giving what sounds like legal or tax advice.

What to deliver

A working prototype

Web or mobile, demoed live. The core journey has to actually work.

Real use of AI

AI that meaningfully contributes to the solution. Qwen through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio is supported, but any suitable model works.

Deployed and explainable

A live URL on Alibaba Cloud or any suitable platform, plus a simple architecture diagram you can explain.

A 10-minute presentation

Problem, demo, architecture, what's next. Every member ready for Q&A.

Use mock or synthetic data. Never put real personal information into your prototype.

How it's judged

Two judges score every team on this problem statement out of 100, using the technical track rubric.

1. Working prototype25 pts

   It runs live, end to end. The main user journey works without hand-waving.

2. AI capability & agentic workflow20 pts

   Does the AI meaningfully contribute to the solution? Where it fits, can it reason, use tools, retrieve information or take actions, rather than only answer questions?

3. System & cloud architecture20 pts

   A sensible technical architecture, and you can explain why each component or service is there. Deploy on Alibaba Cloud or any suitable platform.

4. Impact & problem fit20 pts

   Solves the brief for a real, specific user, rather than building technology for its own sake.

5. Pitch & demo15 pts

   Clear story within 10 minutes, a working demo, and team members who can answer technical questions.

+5 bonus if your prototype works in at least one Southeast Asian language besides English.

Judges reward appropriate use of AI, not complexity for its own sake. Using Alibaba Cloud, Qwen or Qoder is supported but not required to score well.

Draft · final weights are confirmed before the workshops. Compare both track rubrics