Ottawa businesses using AI to scale exports and handle operations

Businesses across Ottawa are adopting AI in surprising ways — from small manufacturers scaling internationally to trades companies solving a perennial problem: missed phone calls.

Nita Tandon runs Dalcini Stainless, which makes stainless steel food storage containers without plastic or chemical resins. She credits AI tools like Intuit QuickBooks's intelligence feature with transforming how she runs the company. "I'm in my books every day now," Tandon said. "We've found quite a number of mistakes and I now look back and say, how many mistakes did I miss over the years?"

The bigger shift has been in market entry. Dalcini now exports to Germany, Finland, and Denmark and is working toward Australia. "To be able to work at that pace is something that we couldn't anticipate," Tandon said. AI has replaced months of student research projects. "We used to hire students at university to put together an export plan for us. We'd review it. It would take months. We can now just move quicker and with more accuracy."

Ottawa startup Booked is tackling a different pain point: missed calls for trades businesses. Founder and CEO Gustavo Sanchez, who previously worked at Shopify and Dropbox, built an AI voice agent platform currently in beta testing. "The phone is the storefront for trades businesses," Sanchez said. "If they don't pick up, the customer moves on to the next company on Google."

A missed call can mean losing a job worth thousands of dollars. Many small operators cannot afford dedicated reception staff. At the Ottawa Home and Garden Show earlier this year, contractors watched the system build functioning personalized voice agents for their businesses within minutes, pulling information from their websites and online reviews. "The agent answers the call and detects emotional cues and responds empathetically when customers describe stressful situations," Sanchez said.