Several new business lines announced at virtual ‘mega-event’

Six years of stellar growth and technological advancement has laid the foundation for the Amber Group to be Jamaica’s leading provider of cutting-edge business solutions. 

As the company celebrates the impressive milestone, Founder and CEO Dushyant Savadia said at a virtual event on Wednesday (October 6) that by announcing its intent to break into new frontiers, the Amber Group is doubling down on its mission to “bring dreams to life using technology”.

Amber Group now boasts 10 business lines to help drive optimal business performance, transform overall customer experience and ‘future-proof’ businesses on many levels from security to payment processing.

Savadia, three years after leaving India to start over in Jamaica, set out on his mission to revolutionise the local technology landscape after running out of money to further his aspirations to give back to the island he now called home. 

“As a programme director for Art of Living [Foundation], I came to Jamaica nine years ago to teach stress management workshops—from corporate executives to farmers, inner-city communities to educational institutions—I taught the Art of Living programme to over 100,000 people in Jamaica,” Savadia began.

“As important as this work is, I could not find the way to continuously fund all the projects I wanted to. I still remember on January 2, 2015, I was broke, with no food in my fridge and no money in my bank. I decided then, instead of depending on sponsorships and donations, I would rather build businesses and use the profits to do good and so, the Amber Group was born,” he said.

Under the group umbrella’s flagship Amber Connect product, nine other entities now operate or are nearly operational: Amber Innovations (multi-stack agile software development company), Amber Pay (QR code and app-based merchant to customer, cash-less, card-less payment solution), Amber Fuels (fully digitalised gas station refuelling solution), Amber Rewards (next-generation loyalty rewards software enabling merchants to create and operate branded loyalty programmes) Amber Aviation (a flex-wing microlight flying experience bolstering the tourism ecosystem), Amber Cybereye (Cybersecurity solutions for cyber incident identification, remediation, proactive security monitoring and cyber defence), Amber Aura (smart sensors and AI-powered smart building management as well as ‘smart home’ solutions), Amber iot (where game-changing IoT hardware and firmware solutions are designed, developed and manufactured), and the Amber Academy (Jamaica’s first-ever Coding Academy in partnership with the HEART Trust/NSTA, and coding in public schools programme). 

Amber Group, which operates in 30 countries globally, was showered with praise for its forward-thinking innovations and impactful technologies, among them, Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Education Minister Fayval Williams. 

In his congratulatory remarks, Holness said Amber Group has been a “key partner” in the development of Jamaica, especially amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has forced many areas of business and government into the digital era.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming how we do business; how we learn and how go about our daily lives. Eighteen months into the pandemic, we see the increased reliance on the power of technology. As we accelerate the pace at which we are moving to a digital- and knowledge-based society, we are leveraging science, technology and innovation to unleash the creative potential of our people and catalyse economic development and sustainable prosperity,” Holness contended.

“Jamaica has continued to forge ahead in technology and the Amber Group has been a key partner in a number of our technology-based responses to the pandemic, as well as, in skills development,” he said.

Citing the JamCOVID solution, Holness continued that the Amber Group was instrumental in aiding Jamaica’s controlled re-entry programme months into the pandemic. 

Prime Minister Holness lauded the Amber HEART Coding Academy as a “key public-private partnership that is training our youth in 21st-century coding skills”.

“Amber is also working with the Ministry of Education in rolling out our Coding in Schools programme. The ENDS system and the appointment system for the national vaccination programme were also developed in conjunction with Amber,” the prime minister noted.

“To achieve Vision 2030, we will need all stakeholders, including the private sector, to play their part,” he continued, adding that he was honoured to acknowledge the contribution of companies such as the Amber Group that help to propel the country’s technology and innovation agenda.

Arguably, one of the more enticing products is Amber Aviation, which Savadia created to complement Jamaica’s “matured” tourism product. 

According to Juliana Moodie, project head at Amber Aviation, the subsidiary provides a “whole new way to see” the island through safe, modern and competitive microlight flight excursions. 

Amber Aviation also boasts a jet-share programme, a first of its kind in Jamaica, where prospective customers get to enjoy all the benefits of private aviation, “without the hassle and costs of full [jet] ownership”.

Amber Pay, which has been utilised by several companies, including the Jamaica Public Service (JPS), gets an additional boost through its partnership with Mastercard to encourage greater use of digital-based payments. 

“With this partnership, Amber will be introducing for the first time in the Caribbean, the Tap-on-Phone technology, which will allow a smartphone to accept payments from contactless cards,” explained Dalton Fowles, Country Manager for Mastercard in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

“This now means that small businesses will have access to payment solutions at a fraction of the cost that it was previously,” he added.