AI company, South Africa · Durban
An AI company from Durban.
IndunAI is built and run in Durban by In House IT. It is an AI assistant that answers a business's customers on WhatsApp, website chat and email, books them into the real calendar and hands the conversation to a person when it should, and we build custom AI agents on the same engine. If your business is in Durban or elsewhere in KwaZulu-Natal, the first conversation about it can happen across your own desk.
You can try it before we meet. The live demo is at /demo, the medical version at /medical, and the bubble in the corner of this page is the same assistant answering for us.
online, replies in seconds
Howzit, can I book a cut and blow-dry? Saturday morning would be lekker20:47
We can do that. Saturday is open at 08:30, 10:00 or 11:30. Which suits you?20:47
Choose a timeSat 26 Sep, 08:3020:48
Booked for Saturday at 08:30. If anything changes, you can move it right here in this chat.20:48
An illustration of the pattern. "Howzit" and "lekker" inside an English sentence are still English, so the reply stays in English, and the times come out of the business's own diary.
Built in Durban
Built here: the story.
IndunAI is made by In House IT, a small company in Durban, and the person you meet is the person who builds it. The name comes from the induna, in Zulu tradition the trusted right hand who receives every visitor and sees that each request is handled. That is the job the software does for a business, and building it here, for South African customers, shaped far more of it than the name.
The engine is the same for every client, wherever they are: one isolated instance per business, hosted in a Johannesburg data centre, and one rule under everything we ship, that the AI proposes and the server verifies. The assistant never decides on its own that a slot is free, what something costs or that a payment has cleared. These are the parts that come from building it for the people who actually message a South African business.
South African English, read properly
Everyday borrowings like ja no, lekker, eish and just now inside an English sentence are read as English, not as a change of language, so nobody is suddenly answered in a language they never wrote in.
Voice notes, answered
Plenty of customers would rather talk than type. The assistant transcribes a WhatsApp voice note and answers it the way it answers a typed message.
Prices typed the way we type them
R450, 4 500 and 4,500 all read as the amounts you meant, and the dashboard shows the figure it read beside the box before you save, so you see what it understood before a customer does.
Public holidays close the diary
Heritage Day on a Thursday is not an ordinary Thursday. On a South African public holiday the diary is closed unless you open it, for your usual hours or for hours you set.
Paid through PayFast
Deposits and invoices can carry a payment link on your own PayFast account, so the money goes to you, and a card payment counts as paid when PayFast confirms it, never because the AI says so.
POPIA from the first day
Each client's instance publishes its own privacy policy, terms and PAIA manual in the business's own name, and a deletion request can be honoured from your own dashboard.
And the languages it answers in
The assistant replies in the language the customer writes in, isiZulu and Afrikaans included, and keeps each message in one language from the first word to the last. Those isiZulu replies are the assistant's own writing: the set wording you control, like the booking confirmation's price line or the away notice, has an Afrikaans version beside the English in the dashboard and no isiZulu one, and nothing you write is machine-translated. If you read only English, tick English on the conversation in the dashboard, and an English translation appears under every message written in another language.
In person
Meeting in person in Durban and KZN.
We are in Durban, so a business here or elsewhere in KwaZulu-Natal can have its first real conversation with us at its own front desk, workshop or consulting room instead of on a video call. Nothing about the product needs a visit. A meeting is for the parts that go better side by side.
Where your enquiries go now
We look at how messages reach you today, on WhatsApp, your website, email and the phone, and what happens to the ones nobody gets to after hours or in the middle of a job. That decides whether the assistant is worth having, and we will tell you if it is not.
The assistant, on your own questions
We open the live demo set to your kind of business and put the questions your customers really ask through it. You watch it answer, ask its own questions and put the booking into a diary, with the server checking the slot first.
Your price list, read for you
Bring a price list, a brochure or an FAQ. The dashboard reads documents you upload, or your website, and drafts your services, prices and hours for you to check. Nothing is saved until you save it.
Your WhatsApp number, connected by you
A number is connected in Meta's own window, and it has to be the person who runs the business on Facebook who does it, because Meta checks the display name against whoever owns the account. We can sit beside you while you do.
If you use the WhatsApp Business app today, it can stay on your phone. Meta calls this coexistence: your app and your existing chats keep working, and the assistant answers on the same number. When you reply from the app, the assistant steps back from that chat. We meet at your practice, shop, office or site in Durban, and further out in KwaZulu-Natal by arrangement. After go-live, support is on WhatsApp and email, the same as for every client.
Who it is for
KZN businesses we work with.
The assistant is built for the businesses customers message before they visit: practices, salons and studios, and the trades that spend the day on site, from the North Coast to the South Coast and inland. It is set up per trade, so the questions it asks before it books change with the business. There are no client logos on this page and there will be no invented ones. The live demo is the proof.
Medical practices and clinics
For GPs, dentists and physiotherapists, its first message says it is an AI, it is designed never to give clinical advice, and the practice's own forms go out before the visit. Aesthetic clinics start from their own template, which asks the clinic's safety questions before the diary opens. The live practice demo is at /medical.
Salons, beauty and studios
Bookings per service and per stylist or artist, a deposit through a PayFast link to hold the slot, a reminder before the appointment and a review request after it.
Plumbers, electricians and trades
It answers the message you could not while you were up a ladder. With real travel-time gaps switched on, it asks for the address before it offers a time on an urgent job, and only offers times somebody can actually reach. Missed calls on the job covers the rest.
Garden services, cleaners and builders
Set up from a starting template for the trade, with its services, hours and questions and your own prices, and team hours if your people would rather answer during the day and leave the assistant the evenings.
Estate agents and professional firms
Enquiries qualified on your own questions before anybody's time is booked, and filed in GoHighLevel if that is the CRM your team works in. More for estate agents and professional services.
Custom AI agents
For a job the assistant does not do out of the box, an agent built on the same engine, scoped with you in writing after you sign up. How a build is scoped and priced is on custom AI development.
FAQ
Fair questions.
Can we meet in person?
Yes, if your business is in Durban or elsewhere in KwaZulu-Natal. Send a WhatsApp to +27 69 235 0986 with what the business does and where you are, and we will find a time to come to you. You can try the live demo first, and nothing about setting up needs a visit.
Is IndunAI really built in Durban?
Yes. It is built and run by In House IT in Durban, and the person you meet is the person who builds it. The servers every client runs on are in a Johannesburg data centre.
Does it answer customers in isiZulu?
It replies in the language the customer writes in, and isiZulu is one of the languages it is told to follow, so a customer who writes in isiZulu is answered in isiZulu. Those replies are the assistant's own writing: the set wording you control has an Afrikaans version beside the English in the dashboard, not an isiZulu one. If you read only English, tick English on the conversation in the dashboard, and an English translation appears under every message written in another language.
Do we have to be in KZN to work with you?
No. Nothing about setting up needs a visit: your WhatsApp number is connected in Meta's own window from the dashboard, the website chat is one line of code, and the rest is done with you over WhatsApp or email, wherever in South Africa you are. In Cape Town we also demo in person, for projects that fit.
Can it answer phone calls?
Not today. It answers WhatsApp messages, website chat and email, and it transcribes and answers WhatsApp voice notes. It does not answer a phone line and it does not make calls. Answering WhatsApp voice calls is built and on its way, but it is not switched on for any business yet, so we do not sell it.
What does it cost?
R1 450 a month including VAT for up to 300 conversations, or R2 250 a month for 300 to 500, plus a once-off R2 500 setup, covers the assistant as it stands, set up around your business. The Managed plan is R4 995 a month with setup included, 2,000 conversations a month and build items you ask for within reason. Anything particular to your business that it does not already do is scoped with you in writing after you sign up, and an agent that does something IndunAI does not do at all is priced per project. WhatsApp's own message fees are Meta's and separate.
Meet us in Durban.
Send a WhatsApp with what your business does and where you are, and we will find a time to come to you. If you would rather see it first, the live demo is open now, and the bubble on this page is the same assistant.
The plain-English guides, written the same way: what is documented, what is not, and how to check it yourself.