Haptik’s First-of-its-kind WhatsApp Chatbot Brings Jio True 5G to India

Jio Haptik Technologies Limited, the world’s largest conversational CRM, announced its enablement of Jio’s launch of True 5G services via WhatsApp. Jio’s version of 5G, called stand-alone 5G, is the most advanced and has no dependency on its 4G network. Jio 5G is Live in 236 Indian cities, with more cities, towns and taluks to be added before the end of the year.

WATCH: Demo of Haptik’s WhatsApp chatbot helping people acquire Jio 5G connection

The WhatsApp Assistant, built by Haptik, is the first of its kind in helping Jio and non-Jio users check for 5G compatibility in their locality. Indian citizens can use the bot to request for 5G connections based on their device compatibility and geographic proximity. The bot supports English, Hindi and Marathi languages on WhatsApp.

Haptik Co-founder & CEO Aakrit Vaish said: “Haptik’s WhatsApp chatbot is paramount to helping customers experience 5G and benefit from powerful functionalities such as 5G voice, low levels of latency, edge computing, and network slicing. Our solution aims to cater to the need of 500 million customers who will be migrating to Jio True 5G, at every step starting with eligibility check to lead collection to sim delivery to device shopping and post-sales support.”

The chatbot offers personalization in the form of dynamic menu options with respect to user type (postpaid and prepaid), device, location and outage management via pin code, among others.

The increased mobility and much-improved connection quality of 5G empowers brands to offer more effective brand-customer communications. While 5G will help brands to personalize and streamline customer journeys, powered by AI, customers will also demand more from their digital experiences.

Jio will leverage Haptik’s Proactive Messaging feature to proactively reach and engage with new and existing users about the launch of 5G services to drive the adoption of the revolutionary network technology.

Haptik also recently launched Click-to-Haptik that will help Jio in running ads on Facebook and Instagram to raise awareness about 5G and trigger new conversations with users on WhatsApp to purchase 5G connections.

About Haptik

Haptik is an omnichannel Conversational CRM leader and a Generative AI-first platform helping 500+ global brands deliver memorable customer experiences. Haptik's prominent clients include Jio, Whirlpool, Dream11, Paisabazaar, Disney+, among others. Haptik helps brands scale support operations to handle high customer volumes in less time, offer proactive assistance, drive customer satisfaction, and foster lifelong customer relationships. The company is a Category Leader across platforms including Gartner, G2, Opus Research & more. Haptik won the “Tech Startup of the Year” award in the Artificial Intelligence category, where its decade-long expertise and excellence remain unmatched.

Jio Haptik's Interakt Presents "WhatsApp on Wheels", Taking the Power of Conversational Commerce to Mumbai

• In partnership with Meta, The WOW initiative is a half-day conference to be held at Taj Santacruz on June 15 from 4 pm onwards
• The event will be attended by over 250 Entrepreneurs, 15+ Speakers across 9+ Interactive Sessions
• It will empower D2C brands to leverage WhatsApp for business growth and customer engagement. 

WhatsApp has been adopted by 15mn+ businesses in India for business communication but few are leveraging its full potential. To encourage more flexible use for businesses Meta introduced the WhatsApp Business APIs in 2018 so that they could go beyond the limitations of the WhatsApp Apps, by offering flexibility and the ability to integrate with their current business platforms.

Since then Jio Haptik a subsidiary of Jio platforms has built its expertise around leveraging WA APIs to build advanced solutions for businesses over WhatsApp. With their product Interakt, a platform for Small and Medium businesses, they provide the ability for any business to manage and grow their business on WhatsApp, by providing a WhatsApp-based CRM, Support Platform, Marketing tool, and WhatsApp Shop, just like the solution they built for Jio Mart.

Interakt has been hosting conferences across the country to evangelize the use of WhatsApp for businesses as well as promote Meta's latest offering of 'Click to WhatsApp Ads' via its flagship event called WhatsApp On Wheels.

In its 6th edition, this month, 'WhatsApp on Wheels' is hosting its Marketing Edition in Mumbai at Taj Santacruz on June 15 from 4 pm onwards.

The event is designed to empower Indian D2C brands with the power of conversational commerce by hosting a series of events that educate them on how to acquire new customers, retain existing business opportunities and drive more conversions at scale on the popular messaging platform - WhatsApp

The half-day conference will provide an excellent opportunity for D2C founders to extend their business reach and knowledge on leveraging conversational commerce's power with WhatsApp.

The 6th Edition of WoW will expect the presence of over 250 entrepreneurs, 15+ speakers, D2C & startup founders, marketing & advertising agency owners, marketing & sales professionals, tech/business influencers, and more. TEAM, TiE Mumbai & D2C Insider have also joined the event as Community Partners.

At this exclusive, invite-only event attendees will learn how to leverage WhatsApp for unlocking powerful brand promotion techniques. With over 9 interactive sessions, they will discover the secrets to maximizing ROAS through click-to-WhatsApp ads and discuss the potential of WhatsApp and ChatGPT to take the business to new heights. The evening will be full of actionable insights from industry experts and real-world success stories of SMBs using WhatsApp. and the event will conclude with Networking Mixer where attendees can connect and network with like-minded professionals.

The lineup of speakers comprises Arjun Vaidya (Founder, Dr. Vaidya's), Naiyya Saggi (Co-founder, The Good Glamm Group), Akshay Gurnani (Co-founder & CEO, Schbang), Puneet Gupta (Founder & CEO, Astro Talk), Krishi Fagwani (Co-founder & CEO, Thrive), and Ambareesh Murthy (Founder, Pepperfry), Malini Agarwal (Founder, Miss Malini), among othersIn partnership with Meta, The WOW initiative is a half-day conference to be held at Taj Santacruz on June 15 from 4 pm onwards

The event will be attended by over 250 Entrepreneurs, 15+ Speakers across 9+ Interactive Sessions

It will empower D2C brands to leverage WhatsApp for business growth and customer engagement.

WhatsApp has been adopted by 15mn+ businesses in India for business communication but few are leveraging its full potential. To encourage more flexible use for businesses Meta introduced the WhatsApp Business APIs in 2018 so that they could go beyond the limitations of the WhatsApp Apps, by offering flexibility and the ability to integrate with their current business platforms.

Since then Jio Haptik a subsidiary of Jio platforms has built its expertise around leveraging WA APIs to build advanced solutions for businesses over WhatsApp. With their product Interakt, a platform for Small and Medium businesses, they provide the ability for any business to manage and grow their business on WhatsApp, by providing a WhatsApp-based CRM, Support Platform, Marketing tool, and WhatsApp Shop, just like the solution they built for Jio Mart.

Interakt has been hosting conferences across the country to evangelize the use of WhatsApp for businesses as well as promote Meta's latest offering of 'Click to WhatsApp Ads' via its flagship event called WhatsApp On Wheels.

In its 6th edition, this month, 'WhatsApp on Wheels' is hosting its Marketing Edition in Mumbai at Taj Santacruz on June 15 from 4 pm onwards.

The event is designed to empower Indian D2C brands with the power of conversational commerce by hosting a series of events that educate them on how to acquire new customers, retain existing business opportunities and drive more conversions at scale on the popular messaging platform - WhatsApp

The half-day conference will provide an excellent opportunity for D2C founders to extend their business reach and knowledge on leveraging conversational commerce's power with WhatsApp.

The 6th Edition of WoW will expect the presence of over 250 entrepreneurs, 15+ speakers, D2C & startup founders, marketing & advertising agency owners, marketing & sales professionals, tech/business influencers, and more. TEAM, TiE Mumbai & D2C Insider have also joined the event as Community Partners.

At this exclusive, invite-only event attendees will learn how to leverage WhatsApp for unlocking powerful brand promotion techniques. With over 9 interactive sessions, they will discover the secrets to maximizing ROAS through click-to-WhatsApp ads and discuss the potential of WhatsApp and ChatGPT to take the business to new heights. The evening will be full of actionable insights from industry experts and real-world success stories of SMBs using WhatsApp. and the event will conclude with Networking Mixer where attendees can connect and network with like-minded professionals.

The lineup of speakers comprises Arjun Vaidya (Founder, Dr. Vaidya's), Naiyya Saggi (Co-founder, The Good Glamm Group), Akshay Gurnani (Co-founder & CEO, Schbang), Puneet Gupta (Founder & CEO, Astro Talk), Krishi Fagwani (Co-founder & CEO, Thrive), and Ambareesh Murthy (Founder, Pepperfry), Malini Agarwal (Founder, Miss Malini), others

Haptik Plans to Leverage ChatGPT AI and Generative AI to Benefit Large Enterprises

Jio Haptik Technologies Limited (Haptik), a leader in conversational commerce, has today announced its vision for using Generative AI to build the most human-like bots for enterprises. The announcement comes as the Company launches four beta features that are going to be powered by the latest Generative AI technology.

Speaking on the launch of beta features, Haptik Co-founder & CTO Swapan Rajdev said: “I’m stoked by the potential business opportunity Generative AI brings for enterprises. At Haptik, we have already been using GPT 2 and GPT 3 to augment the bot training data for higher accuracy. ChatGPT uses GPT-3.5 and is a whole different ball game altogether. I’m glad to announce our four upcoming beta launches that can humanize your bot, engaging in free-flowing conversations with your customers without hours of manual training and effort.”

The emergence of GPT-3.5 allows Haptik to improve the accuracy of chatbot’s responses. By leveraging an accurate chatbot that engages in meaningful and human-like conversations, enterprises will be able to offer a better customer experience (CX), improve customer engagement, reduce drop-offs, and ultimately, foster stronger customer relationships.

Haptik said that its new beta features will be made available to all its customers and will be deployed across the platform. It estimates that the features will help enterprises improve their CSAT metric by 10-15% thanks largely to the humanized, more accurate responses of the chatbot. Haptik also mentions that the go-to market and build time will be reduced by at least 30%.

Haptik has made its mark in the conversational commerce space by helping enterprises deliver end-to-end commerce experiences on messaging channels such as WhatsApp, Google Business Messages, Messenger, and others. Thus, Haptik helps enterprises generate direct revenue while optimizing costs and resources.

Generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT have the potential to help Haptik create an extensive array of content and add virtually countless variations of bot responses to enable it to handle a variety of customer queries and offer authentic, meaningful answers.

Haptik said it plans to work with its customers and partners to use Generative AI to drive innovation.

About Haptik

Haptik helps brands acquire, convert, and support users with AI-driven conversational experiences across 20 channels and 100+ languages. With the vision of creating the most compelling conversational commerce platform of the 21st century, Haptik’s Conversational Commerce platform enables brands to design delightful experiences that improve conversion rates across every stage of their customer’s journey. Haptik’s leading clients and partners include KFC, Whirlpool, Starhub, HP, Reliance Jio, CEAT, Disney Hotstar, OLA, and Zurich Insurance among others. The company has been featured as a Category Leader across many platforms including Gartner, G2, Opus Research & more. 

WhatsApp To Take Center Stage As Primary Marketing Channel - Haptik’s The State of WhatsApp Marketing 2023 Report

As brands map out their marketing plans and customer engagement strategies for the new year, Jio Haptik Technologies Limited, the world’s largest WhatsApp chatbot solution provider, has compiled an in-depth report titled ‘The State of WhatsApp Marketing 2023’ that speaks to marketers about WhatsApp as a growth channel, trends that will shape marketing in the new year, best practices for WhatsApp business messaging, and more. The downloadable report was released at the Company’s quarterly product event, Hype, held virtually, on Wednesday.

Aakrit Vaish, CEO & Co-founder, Haptik, said: “With a reach of over 2 billion users across 180 countries, WhatsApp has emerged as a powerful marketing channel for brands to connect and engage with prospects across the globe. ‘The State of WhatsApp Marketing 2023’ is Haptik’s special initiative covering all the aspects essential to marketers about WhatsApp as a marketing channel. It covers trends, strategies and best practices to help Marketing, CX, and Growth leaders in the new year. The report includes case studies of prominent consumer brands that have leveraged WhatsApp to boost customer engagement, unlock higher revenue potential and foster brand loyalty.”

A timeline of the evolution of WhatsApp as a business platform is featured in ‘The State of WhatsApp Marketing 2023’, highlighting the new features and innovations on WhatsApp in the last couple of years that make it a powerful channel for marketers to drive end-to-end customer engagement.

Marketers and Growth leaders focus on generating high-quality leads, driving quick purchases, and ensuring their valuable customers are retained, and that they are engaged at every stage of their lifecycle. The report offers a data-backed narrative along with case studies and success stories of consumer brands that have accomplished key business metrics by using WhatsApp as their primary marketing and growth channel.

With personalization being an intrinsic part of customer experience and the growing need for brands to proactively engage with customers, the report discusses the solutions and tools that brands can leverage for customer engagement both within and outside WhatsApp.

Industry-specific use cases and dos and don’ts of WhatsApp business messaging are the other highlights that make the report an essential read as the messaging app indeed promises to be a key part of brands’ marketing strategy in 2023.

Nilkamal Partners With Haptik To Deliver Seamless Customer Experience Across Platforms

Jio Haptik Technologies Limited, the world’s foremost conversational commerce platform, has joined hands with Nilkamal, the world’s largest manufacturer of molded furniture, to enable a consistent brand experience for its customers on WhatsApp and website.

During the phase-1 launch, Nilkamal’s capabilities will allow it to resolve frequently-asked customer queries and reduce the dependency on support agents, which helps optimize manpower capacity planning.

The Haptik-Nilkamal partnership does not only automate WhatsApp commerce at a granular level but also helps customers track their order status, status of their refund requests, and add product discovery as part of their shopping experience. The bot has been designed to make commerce through conversations a matter of intuition and uses Haptik’s flagship smart skills - Product Discovery, Smart Agent Chat and Feedback to achieve this.

Haptik’s intelligent WhatsApp and website bots enable a smooth brand experience and help personalize the customer experience, which results in customer delight.

Aakrit Vaish, Haptik Co-founder and CEO, said: “The Haptik-Nilkamal partnership brings forth robust solutions driven by our intuitive bots to streamline customer experience, optimize support agent performance and ultimately achieve customer satisfaction. Customer experience, after all, is the name of the game and our solutions help brands like Nilkamal to offer the best CX whose foundation lies in hyper personalization and seamless brand-customer communications.”

Abhishek Pathak, Head of Customer Success at Nilkamal, said: “Thanks to Haptik, Nilkamal has enhanced customer experience by ensuring our customers are able to access round-the- clock support to address their key concerns, track order and refund status, and explore our world-class products. Haptik’s WhatsApp and website chatbots help us drive conversations that feel natural with a human touch to them.”

Product Exploration, Smart Agent Chat and Feedback are the Smart Skills from Haptik that power Nilkamal’s renewed customer experience strategy.

About Haptik

Haptik helps brands acquire, convert, engage and delight users with AI-driven, personalized, conversational experiences across 20 channels and 100+ languages. With the vision of creating the most compelling conversational commerce platform of the 21st century, Haptik’s Conversational Commerce platform enables brands to design delightful experiences that improve conversion rates across every stage of their customer’s journey. Haptik’s leading clients and partners include KFC, Whirlpool, Starhub, HP, Reliance Jio, CEAT, Disney Hotstar, OLA, and Zurich Insurance among others. The company has been featured as a Category Leader across many platforms including Gartner, G2, Opus Research & more.

CASHe Partners Haptik to Launch Automated Instant Credit Disbursals on WhatsApp

Jio Haptik Technologies Limited (Haptik), the world’s largest WhatsApp chatbot solution provider, today announced it has partnered with CASHe, India’s leading financial wellness platform to enable an industry-first automated instant credit line disbursals on WhatsApp.

The overriding technology powering this solution is Haptik’s advanced Conversational Commerce capabilities and CASHe’s AI-powered bot that matches the user’s inputs and automatically facilitates a formal application, along with a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) check. Once verified, it sets up a credit line in a few clicks through a guided conversational flow. The user’s details are generated and displayed based on the name entered – the only key input that the borrower needs to enter at the start of the conversation. 

The WhatsApp chatbot is a one-stop, end-to-end solution for young professionals who can access instance credit. Users can connect with CASHe on WhatsApp at +918097553191.

Here’s a demo of how the CASHe WhatsApp Bot offers a seamless borrowing experience by understanding loan eligibility, loan application approval, document verification, and loan disbursal.

Swapan Rajdev, Co-founder and CTO, Haptik, said: “Brands today need to be on WhatsApp. Haptik is pleased to be partnering with CASHe, India’s leading financial wellness platform, with the aim of helping borrowers get access to loans and credit seamlessly and in under a minute. The CASHe WhatsApp bot, powered by Haptik, offers users a smooth onboarding and borrowing experience that includes instant verification, document upload, automated underwriting, and more importantly, quick loan disbursal. Since going live with our WhatsApp bot, CASHe has witnessed 50,000+ credit line issuances, more than INR 25 Cr in loan disbursals, and more.”

Yashoraj Tyagi, CTO & CBO, CASHe, said, “We are happy to partner with Haptik to offer a unique digital experience for our customers by integrating our services into WhatsApp, a popular platform that is already familiar and frequented by millions of its users. CASHe and the team at Haptik developed a WhatsApp native comprehensive loan processing and disbursal module that allows users to interact within WhatsApp without having to leave the platform. With this solution on offer, we have successfully pivoted our credit model to adapt to the shifts in the lending space by offering instant sachet loans to existing and prospective borrowers through an engaging and conversational flow. The digital assistant on WhatsApp helps us to reach out to new customers and support the existing ones. We are very excited about the prospects that lie ahead of us.”

Within months of launch, Haptik’s WhatsApp chatbot solution for CASHe has witnessed exponential growth in daily conversations and is set to scale higher.

About Haptik

Haptik helps brands acquire, convert, engage and delight users with AI-driven, personalized, conversational experiences across 20 channels and 100+ languages. With the vision of creating the most compelling conversational commerce platform of the 21st century, Haptik’s Conversational Commerce platform enables brands to design delightful experiences that improve conversion rates across every stage of their customer’s journey. Haptik’s leading clients and partners include KFC, Whirlpool, Starhub, HP, Reliance Jio, CEAT, Disney Hotstar, OLA, and Zurich Insurance among others. The company has been featured as a Category Leader across many platforms including Gartner, G2, Opus Research & more.

About CASHe

Headquartered in Mumbai, CASHe is one of India’s leading AI-based, credit-led financial wellness platform focused on making financial inclusion possible by serving the underserved digital customers in India. The company is driven by its laser focus to unlock opportunities for the millennial and Gen Z population by making financial inclusion and accessibility possible using its cutting-edge algorithms and AI and ML-based credit decisioning model called the Social Loan Quotient (SLQ). Since its launch in 2016, CASHe has registered over 24 million app downloads on the app store and has disbursed loans worth Rs 5,400 crores to over 5 lakh customers. Its affordable interest rates, instant processing, and flexible repayment options make it India’s most preferred digital credit platform. Over the past year, CASHe has constantly introduced new product offerings and services in line with increasing consumer demands and has successfully transformed itself into a full-fledged financial services platform that offers its customers credit, investment, insurance, and EMI shopping.

Haptik AI now supports India's Universal Language - Hinglish

 

MUMBAI, India, Aug. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Jio Haptik Technologies Ltd, one of the world's largest Conversational AI companies and a subsidiary of Reliance Jio platforms, has now introduced Hinglish (a mixture of Hindi and English) chatbots to help brands engage with Indian customers in their preferred language.

While Hindi & English are popular languages, Hinglish is emerging rapidly with 350 million+ speakers versus only 125 million+ English speakers. This shift in language is primarily because users find texting and having conversations in Hinglish more convenient. Since a vast majority of India also lives in semi-urban and rural regions and might not be fluent in English, it becomes even more critical for brands to adapt to the customer's preferred language instead of a one-size-fits-all approach with English or Hindi.

For instance, if users want to track their order, they can frame the query as "Mera order kahan hai" in Hinglish.

Hinglish chatbots by Haptik can automatically identify when a user initiates a conversation in Hinglish or Hindi & continue the conversation accordingly. It further transliterates Hinglish to Hindi to understand the user query in their natural language instead of transferring it to an agent. Haptik's proprietary NLU engine ensures the most accurate response, configurable either in Hindi or Hinglish as preferred by the brand.

Thus, Haptik chatbots can answer the above-asked Hinglish query as:

Bot: Hi, I am your Virtual Assistant. How can I help you today?
User: Mera order kahan hai?
Bot: Zaroor, mujhe aapka order track karne dein. Kya aap mujhe apna order ID bata sakte hain?
OR
Bot: ज़रूर, मुझे आपकी ऑर्डर ट्रैक करने दें। क्या आप मुझे अपना ऑर्डर आईडी बता सकते हैं?

Haptik's first customer to break the language barrier with Hinglish is Jiomobility. Jiomobility's mission is to make superior internet & network accessible to every person in every corner of India. With a vast majority of their audience based in tier-2 & tier-3 cities, the flexibility of interacting in Hindi or Hinglish helps in supporting their non-English speaking users. This further translates to a higher resolution rate on the chatbot & increased customer satisfaction.

Upon Jiomobility's launch for Hinglish, Swapan Rajdev, CTO & Co-founder at Haptik, said, "Speaking your customer's language is critical in today's world. We don't want customers to adapt to what the business can support. We always want businesses to adapt to their customer needs. And customers need the flexibility to speak in their preferred native language. Hinglish also becomes important with the growing popularity of chat platforms like WhatsApp, where users prefer to be more informal and casual. This combination is an ultimate winner for brands like Jiomobility that are focused on customer experience."

About Haptik

Haptik is one of the world's largest Conversational AI companies, having reached over 100 million devices, and processed over 4 billion conversations. Part of the $65 billion Internet conglomerate Reliance Jio Platforms, Haptik Intelligent virtual assistants enable Fortune 500 brands globally to enhance customer experience while saving costs and increasing revenue. The company is featured as a leader in the category across many platforms, including Gartner, AI Time Journal, Opus Research & more. Haptik's leading clients and partners include KFC, Oyo Rooms, Starhub, HP, Tata Group, Disney Hotstar, OLA, and Zurich Insurance, among others. For further information, visit https://haptik.ai

Haptik's contribution towards NLU research recognized alongside Google Brain, OpenAI and IBM Research at EMNLP 2020

MUMBAI, India , Nov. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Jio Haptik Technologies Limited, one of the world's largest conversational AI companies and a subsidiary of Reliance Jio Platforms, was recently recognised at EMNLP 2020 for its exceptional contribution. EMNLP is a Tier-1 venue for researchers around the world to publish results which push the boundaries of Natural Language Processing. The company introduced three new datasets for the NLP community that has the potential to emerge as a major benchmark for Intent Detection globally. The paper also benchmarks Intent detection accuracy of Haptik which is at par and in some cases better than the likes of Google's DialogFlow, Microsft LUIS and Rasa.

The paper authors presented was HINT3: Raising the bar for Intent Detection in the Wild alongside other companies like Google Brain, IBM, Open AI at the Insights Workshop EMNLP 2020.

The publication also draws attention towards existing gaps in the performance of chatbots in the real world. Unlike current datasets that contain crowdsourced user queries, HINT3 contains samples of real user queries and the likelihood of this performance translating proportionally to Customer Experience (CSAT) is very high.

While analysing the best-case performance of all the platforms on queries which are in the scope of bots present in training data, Haptik performs exceptionally well. At the same time, Haptik's capability to fallback to humans on the queries which are out of the scope of bot is also at par or better than other platforms as visible from the peak MCC score averaged across all datasets. This can be ascertained from the table 1 below -

Conversational AI Platform	Haptik	Dialogflow	Rasa	LUIS
Average In-scope Accuracy	73	69.2	67.4	59.9
Average MCC score	0.538	0.522	0.492	0.458

Echoing Swapan Rajdev , CTO at Haptik thoughts, "I am extremely proud of the hard work, testing and performance standards that have gone into building our NLU technology. With the HINT-3 dataset we are trying to give back to our developer community by ensuring better benchmarking standards for everyone. Benchmarking Haptik's performance alongside Dialogflow, LUIS, RASA and other players is just another step towards ensuring best-in-class technology for our customer's advantage."

Even though chatbots and virtual assistants get trained and learn over time as interactions increase, it's equally important to provide the best customer experience during the initial days of implementation. Upon analyzing the performance of leading vendors with even lesser data containing sufficient signal to learn, Haptik stands out. This also means that for companies where getting sufficient data is a challenge, Haptik can be cost-effective and efficient. The dataset is open-source, results shown are duly accepted at Insights Workshop co-located with EMNLP 2020 and are fully reproducible with the steps available on GitHub.

Conversational AI Platform	Haptik	Dialogflow	LUIS	Rasa
Average In-scope Accuracy	67.7	64.0	55.0	58.4
Average MCC score	0.484	0.482	0.457	0.411

Echoing Swapan Rajdev, CTO at Haptik thoughts, "I am extremely proud of the hard work, testing and performance standards that have gone into building our NLU technology. With the HINT-3 dataset we are trying to give back to our developer community by ensuring better benchmarking standards for everyone. Benchmarking Haptik's performance alongside Dialogflow, LUIS, RASA and other players is just another step towards ensuring best-in-class technology for our customer's advantage."

As NLP is the backbone of any Conversational AI engine, it is the most frequently used decision-making factor in choosing a Digital Transformation partner. Apart from the recognition at EMNLP, Haptik NLP has also received multiple other accolades like the Raise Award from Government of India for Industry expertise.

About Haptik

Haptik is one of the world's largest Conversational AI companies, having reached over 100 million devices, and processed over 3 billion conversations to date. The company's intelligent virtual assistant solutions enable Fortune 500 brands globally to enhance customer experience while saving costs and increasing sales. 

Haptik has been the recipient of several industry accolades, including the Frost & Sullivan Award for Conversational AI Company of the Year 2018, AI Start-up of the year 2020 by Entrepreneur India and recognition as one of the Top 25 AI Companies in the World 2018 by AI Time Journal. Haptik's leading clients and partners include Oyo Rooms, KFC, Tata Group, Disney Hotstar, OLA, and Zurich Insurance among others. Haptik is a part of Reliance Jio Platforms, who acquired a majority stake in the company in a $100 million deal in April 2019 .

Contact enterprise@haptik.ai to know more.

Haptik-powered Corona Chatbot Sees Over 2 Cr Users

The government's dedicated WhatsApp chatbot MyGov Corona Helpdesk, which aims to provide timely updates and help citizens clear their queries on Covid-19, has been used by over 2 crore users.

Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot company Haptik Infotech Pvt Ltd, which is 87 per cent owned by Reliance Jio, developed the MyGov Corona Helpdesk chatbot.

According to Haptik, more than 55 million messages have been sent by over 20 million users since the chatbot was launched by the government on March 20.

"Misinformation & rumours are the primary outlets of panic. The @reliancejio & @haptik powered official @mygovindia coronavirus chatbot has helped eliminate these outlets for millions. Whatsapp +919013151515 for your queries," Haptik tweeted.

In two weeks since its launch, the coronavirus helpdesk chatbot has been used by over 2 crore users in India.

"The 'MyGov Corona helpdesk' has already processed over 28 million conversations on WhatsApp from users across the country while more than 20 million users have taken their queries to the chatbot within the 13 days since its launch," Haptik co-founder and CEO Aakrit Vaish told PTI.

Within the first week of its launch, the chatbot registered over crore users and processed over 1.4 crore conversations.

The service was initially launched in English, and Hindi language was added later to assist the millions of Hindi-speaking users in the country, Vaish said.

"Language is no barrier when it comes to the official coronavirus chatbot. The ''MyGov Corona Helpdesk'' is equipped to resolve your virus related questions in Hindi. Send a Whatsapp message to the number +91 9013151515 to prevent misinformation," Haptik tweeted.

The MyGov Corona Helpdesk can be used by all WhatsApp users for free. Users just need to save the number -- 9013151515 -- in their contacts list and send a message to get a response.

The coronavirus has killed around 100 persons and infected over 3,300 in India.

The chatbot reportedly had over 17 lakh daily active users on March 25 -- the day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned its availability. The following day, the number of active users grew exponentially to 35 lakh, and the number has been growing since then.

Vaish explained that the bot caters to a set of pre-defined questions. If the chatbot receives a query that is not within the scope of the mentioned questions, it sends an automated response stating that it does not have that information.

"...if a certain query is being asked by users frequently, then the Haptik team analyses those queries and adds them to the scope of the chatbot. Thus, catering to a wider set of questions," he said. PTI ANZ SR ABM

67% Users prefer Virtual Assistants with a ‘Friendly’ Personality - Study by Haptik

Research study by the world’s largest Conversational AI company reveals
67% users prefer virtual assistants with a ‘friendly’ personality in terms of comfort level, efficiency, and likelihood of re-engagement

Haptik, the world’s largest Conversational AI platform, has published a research study on  “Virtual Assistant Personality Preference Among Urban English Speakers”. The study was conducted by  Brinda Mehra, a Psychology student investigating the effects of inserting personality in chatbots and virtual assistants, and its influence on customer experiences primarily across three domains- likelihood of re-engagement, comfort levels and estimation of productivity and efficiency.

The research paper is available for download here.

As a part of the study,  Haptik conducted experiments using bots with three distinct personality types:

• Transactional bot (impersonal and serious bot solely focused on efficiently completing tasks).


• Prosocial bot (attempts to mimic a ‘helping hand’, engaging in social niceties and easing users through task completion).


• Friendly bot (emotional and energetic bot that uses slang and pop culture references, simulating conversations between close friends).

The study revealed that urban English speakers overwhelmingly prefer virtual assistants that exhibit a friendly personality - rating them higher than more impersonal, purely ‘transactional’ assistants when it comes to factors such as comfort level and efficiency while completing tasks. They were also more likely to re-engage with ‘friendly’ assistants.

In the first experiment, participants, aged between 18-50, were asked to order food using each of the three bots. Although their ages varied drastically, their demographics were  roughly the same. All participants had completed or were completing some level of tertiary education, had access to a smartphone or laptop (if not both) and were fluent English speakers living in metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Hong Kong.



They were then asked to rate each of the three bots on a Likert scale, on three parameters - likelihood of re-engaging with the bot, their comfort level with the bot, and the efficiency with which the bot completed the task at hand.

The results of the experiment were as follows:

• 40% of participants said that they felt extremely comfortable interacting with the friendly bot.


• Participants were nearly three times more likely to state that they would definitely want to interact with the friendly chatbot again, as compared to the transactional bot.


• The friendly bot was nearly four times more likely to get the highest rating for productivity and efficiency, as compared to the transactional bot.


• The average ranking of the friendly chatbot was around 22% higher than that of the transactional bot.

The overwhelming preference for the friendly personality was further validated by the second experiment, with participants being asked to rate the three types of personalities based on viewing an interaction with a chat-based dictionary. The participants of the second experiment were aged 11 to 15, indicating that the preference for the friendly bots applies across age groups. The findings revealed that 67% of participants expressed a preference for the friendly bot, over the prosocial and transactional types. Qualitative feedback collected from the participants indicated that the friendly bot made them “feel like they were talking to another human being”. The use of gifs, slang and emojis by this bot also appealed to them.

What this means for the future of user engagement?

The one-of-its-kind study by Haptik has revealed interesting insights that can have far-reaching effects on how we understand man-machine engagement today.  “The popularity of the friendly bot gives enterprises a new perspective to look at conversational AI solutions,'' said Prateek Gupte, VP - Product at Haptik. “The evolution of virtual assistant personalities is currently enjoying the beginning of its golden age.  This study is an important contribution to the literature on the subject. At Haptik, we have continuously stressed on building bots that have both a distinct personality along with targeted utility.  Chatbots and virtual assistants, after all, are essentially the 24x7 voice of enterprises and brands to engage with end-users. Therefore, they are best served to have bots which can make conversations fun for users and something to look forward to."

Interestingly, Haptik has been doing significant work in the field of enhancing user experience in chatbot engagement. Its research team conducts extensive, granular level analysis of each element involved in chatbot conversations, such as the font, sound design, tonality of conversation, length of sentences, and even the emoticons used.

Kartik Poddar, Haptik’s Business Head, also commented on the study by saying “While there have been previous studies on bot personality, they have largely focused on general conversation chatbots like Mitsuku or Xiaoice. Our study is a rare experimental investigation on the role that personality plays in the context of enterprise virtual assistants. It will certainly inform our approach to designing superior conversational experiences for our partners - by enhancing our understanding of how to make human-to-machine interactions a lot more engaging, while still keeping our partners’ unique brand voice and personality in mind."

For those looking to get a more in-depth understanding of the research process and the insights obtained, download the research paper here.

About Haptik

Haptik is one of the world’s largest Conversational AI companies, having reached over 100 million devices, and processed over 2 billion conversations till date. The company has been the recipient of several industry accolades, including the Frost & Sullivan Award for Conversational AI Company of the Year 2018, and recognition as one of the Top 25 AI Companies in the World 2018 by AI Time Journal. Haptik’s leading clients and enterprise partners include Samsung, Oyo Rooms, KFC, Coca-Cola, Tata Group, Club Mahindra among others. Haptik is a part of the Reliance Jio group of companies, which acquired a majority stake in the company in a $100 million deal in April 2019.

Maharashtra Ties with Haptik to Launch An AI Driven Initiative to provide Info on 1400 Public Services

As part of the Right to Services Act of 2015, this bot has been deployed to complement existing mobile app and websites that help with queries related to healthcare, education, public utilities, rural development, revenue and many other services.

In keeping with the digitization effort being actively pursued by the Indian government, the Government of Maharashtra has partnered with Haptik, the world’s largest conversational AI platform, to develop a chatbot for the purposes of effective information dissemination, as part of the Right to Services Act of 2015. The Act mandates that citizens should be able to access information regarding public services through digital platforms. The new chatbot will be another medium through which citizens can get their queries resolved.

One can try Aaple Sarkar Bot in action here  -https://aaplesarkar.mahaonline.gov.in/en

Available on the Aaple Sarkar RTS (Right to Services) website, the bot provides easy, conversational access to information regarding 1,400 public services managed by the state government.  

The platform has already received an overwhelming response from the residents of the state. The bot has substantially benefited users by providing them with instantaneous, accurate, transparent and complete information, as well as enabling them to track services offered by the state government.

Haptik’s
chatbot simplifies the process of searching through the vast array of
public services. Users can simply search for services like ‘driving
license’ to view all the prerequisites for the application process, and
can then track the status of their application. Accessing relevant
information, collating documents, initiating the application process,
monitoring its progress to eventual completion and feedback submission,
the RTS portal chatbot handholds the user through every stage of the
process.

Commenting on the latest initiative, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis said, “Accountability, efficiency, transparency and inclusion are the cornerstones of Good Governance. In
today’s era, the test of true Government is provision of services and
processing the paperwork with minimum human interference that too in a
time bound manner. One should get the desired services or the desired
paper processed in a time bound, transparent and predictable manner
without even knowing the person behind the show.   

Technology
is the only way we can scale governance and fulfil the aspirations of
our young population and we are proud to state that in Maharashtra we
have a dedicated portal ‘Aaple Sarkar’ through which more than 400
online services are being provided.

In
line with that the Aaple Sarkar Chatbot is another positive step to
provide solutions to the queries of public through conversations. With
the help of AI, this conversational facility is definitely going to
significantly improve the public service frameworks.

With
the launch of this chatbot, the State Government endeavoured to provide
complete range of services to the people in more efficient manner. Moreover, we are also planning to add support for Marathi and Hindi in this chatbot. “

Remarking on this commendable digitization effort, Aakrit Vaish, Co-Founder and CEO, Haptik said,
“It always gives us immense joy to implement conversational solutions
that can significantly improve public service frameworks, as these
impact the lives of millions. The RTS chatbot comprises a range of
algorithms that gives it the ability to process a large number of
queries every day, analyzing each conversation, maintaining records and
providing the user with the most useful information. We have been blown
away by the state government’s adoption of AI technology in general, and
are excited to work with them in the coming years to make the RTS bot
successful statewide across multiple languages.”

Public
services have long been accused of being stuck in non-standardized and
inefficient methods of operation, which makes availing them a cumbersome
task for citizens. In fact, the convoluted process often deters even
those residents for whose benefit specific schemes are formulated. In
such a scenario, platforms such as Aaple Sarkar offer
a new means of making a technological intervention to extend these
services in the most optimized manner to those who need it the most.

About Haptik -
Haptik is one of the world's largest conversational AI platforms, with a client list that includes Fortune 500 brands such as Samsung, Coca-Cola, Future Retail, KFC, Tata Group, ICICI Bank, Mahindra Group, among others.

Backed by investors like Kalari Capital and Times Internet, Haptik focuses on key customer engagement use cases such as customer support, feedback, order status and live chat and has processed more than a billion interactions till date. Haptik was the first company to open source a conversation based Entity Detection engine, and is patent pending on our unique bot to agent routing capabilities. In April 2016, Times Internet led a Series B round of investment in Haptik, making it one of the most well-funded independent conversational AI companies in the world

Haptik Partners With Amazon Pay to Power Transactions for its 5M User Base

Haptik, the chatbot platform company that powers the virtual assistant app Haptik, today announced that it has partnered with Amazon Pay to power transactions for its 5 million user base. Using Haptik, people can book flights, pay bills, buy local deals - all these transactions can now be made using Amazon Pay. This makes Haptik the first app in the country to enable 3 key categories via Amazon Pay - Flight Booking, Recharge and Bill Payments. In other words, the only way you can do these transactions if you are an Amazon Pay customer is through the Haptik app.

“Amazon has shown over the last few years that they want to be market leaders when it comes to e-commerce in India”, said Aakrit Vaish, Co-Founder & CEO of Haptik, who was also recently the recipient of the AWS Deep Tech in Mobility award. “Amazon Pay is a natural progression in that effort, and we are super excited to be one of their first launch partners for this.”

Amazon Pay is the payment arm of Amazon India, and is gradually starting to rollout to partners by invite only. “When they first reached out to us, we were not very familiar with the idea of Amazon Pay. As we got to know the team better, we understood their plans and realized this is a no brainer for us to get in early. We are the only app other than food tech on their platform currently and are very proud of that,” said Aakrit.

Haptik is a Times Internet company, and is one of the largest conversational commerce companies in the world. The app is one of the highest rated apps in India and offers a guarantee on cheapest flight prices as well as no peak pricing on cab rides. It was recently featured as a top global innovator at the Chatbot Summit in Berlin and open sourced a key part of their technology at the event, the first such breakthrough globally.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Haptik Partners with HDFC Life To Introduce India's First Insurance Chatbot

HDFC Life, one of India’s leading private life insurance companies, announced the launch of India’s first life insurance chatbot in collaboration with Mumba-based Haptik, India’s largest chatbot platform. The chatbot will act as a financial guide to help users choose the most suitable life insurance plans and solutions.

This chatbot aims to assist the customers with insurance advice – ranging from Health to Tax Planning & Retirement, based on a simple 60-second quiz which enables it to compute their Insurance Quotient. Calculated using different parameters under each insurance category, the Insurance Quotient is an indicative score for each individual, based on which, HDFC Life can recommend the best suited insurance plans for the user. The chatbot not only works as a personal financial advisor, but also brings to the forefront the universal need for life insurance.

The chatbot will be live for only two weeks from the date of its launch on the Haptik app, which is available on both iOS and Android.



Talking about the need for this platform, Mr. Suresh Badami, CDO - HDFC Life, said “Many of us in our country, particularly the millennials, are under insured and need a simple platform to access relevant information about insurance.

We at HDFC Life have invested heavily in the adoption of cutting edge technology to offer insurance solutions across customer segments through multiple touch points. One such initiative is to pilot the use of artificial intelligence to act as personal assistant to the discerning new age customer. Haptik's chatbot enables us to do this and reach the millenials through the medium that they are most accustomed to and are comfortable with".

Aakrit Vaish, CEO, Haptik, added, "We are extremely excited to partner with HDFC Life to build the India’s first Life Insurance chatbot. We believe chat as an interface simplifies tons of complex everyday experiences, and nothing gets more complex than the process of understanding Life Insurance. HDFC Life was the ideal partner who understands the value a bot could bring, and timing it the financial year end made a lot of sense."

To recall, in December human resource company Peoplestrong had introduced Jinie which is touted as India's First HR Chatbot.


About Haptik

Haptik is India’s largest Conversational Commerce platform powered by chatbots. A personal assistant service, Haptik aims to redefine the way people get their everyday tasks done using the common chat tool as the underlying interface. Having partnered with leading players across various categories, Haptik leverages technology to become a one-stop mobile commerce platform. It aims to create an efficient chatbot experience assisted by humans to solve complex queries and complete end-to-end transactions.

This is the second big contextual chat-bot that Haptik has deployed on its platform in the last month. Leveraging its core Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence based technology, this further builds relevance and strengthens their proposition of ‘getting real work done on chat.’ The company earlier did a Valentine’s Day gifting bot in partnership with Archies. Haptik leverages technology to become a one-stop mobile commerce platform. It aims to create an efficient chatbot experience assisted by humans to solve complex queries and complete end-to-end transactions.

[Top-most Image - Shutterstock]

Haptik Raises Funding from Times Internet in Series B Round

Haptik has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Times Internet in a series B round. The funds will be used for product development, improving artificial intelligence capabilities and business operations. Through this partnership, Haptik will leverage Times Internet’s reach of over 150 million engaged users to offer its service to a wider audience.

Haptik is a mobile application that enables users to get daily tasks done by chatting with assistants. The important requests that Haptik fulfills include online shopping, travel bookings, food delivery, restaurant reservations, best mobile plan recharges, etc. Haptik is a gateway to various services on user phone, simplifying multiple, complex applications into one, easy to use chat interface.

“We started Haptik so that consumers could get the most out of their phones, without the huge learning curve of navigating hundreds of different apps. Ordering food or checking into a flight should be as easy as asking for it, and that’s what Haptik can do,” said Aakrit Vaish, CEO of Haptik. “With Times Internet as a partner, we’re excited to offer what we’ve built over the last two years to millions of consumers across India.”

Haptik claims that it has grown multifold in the last one year and now processes over half a million requests per month, out of which 25% are completed using artificial intelligence. The company works with fulfillment partners, including Flipkart, Cleartrip, Via.com, Urbanclap, Dineout, etc. In 2014, Haptik raised a seed round from Kalaari Capital, one of India’s leading Venture Capital funds.

Founded by Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev in 2013, Haptik is a chat based personal assistant service available on Android & iOS. In 2016, Haptik also partnered with Samsung Mobiles to offer a first of its kind pre-built messaging concierge service to their users.

Haptik Raises Funding from Times Internet in Series B Round

Haptik has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Times Internet in a series B round. The funds will be used for product development, improving artificial intelligence capabilities and business operations. Through this partnership, Haptik will leverage Times Internet’s reach of over 150 million engaged users to offer its service to a wider audience.

Haptik is a mobile application that enables users to get daily tasks done by chatting with assistants. The important requests that Haptik fulfills include online shopping, travel bookings, food delivery, restaurant reservations, best mobile plan recharges, etc. Haptik is a gateway to various services on user phone, simplifying multiple, complex applications into one, easy to use chat interface.

“We started Haptik so that consumers could get the most out of their phones, without the huge learning curve of navigating hundreds of different apps. Ordering food or checking into a flight should be as easy as asking for it, and that’s what Haptik can do,” said Aakrit Vaish, CEO of Haptik. “With Times Internet as a partner, we’re excited to offer what we’ve built over the last two years to millions of consumers across India.”

Haptik claims that it has grown multifold in the last one year and now processes over half a million requests per month, out of which 25% are completed using artificial intelligence. The company works with fulfillment partners, including Flipkart, Cleartrip, Via.com, Urbanclap, Dineout, etc. In 2014, Haptik raised a seed round from Kalaari Capital, one of India’s leading Venture Capital funds.

Founded by Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev in 2013, Haptik is a chat based personal assistant service available on Android & iOS. In 2016, Haptik also partnered with Samsung Mobiles to offer a first of its kind pre-built messaging concierge service to their users.

Mumbai Startup Haptik raises $1 million from Kalaari Capital

Mumbai based startup Haptik, that we recently reviewed last month raises $1 million from Kalaari Capital. The startup will use the funds to boost its marketing and product offering in India.

Kalaari Capital, which is typically a series A-stage investor, came into the seed round.

Haptik is basically a Text Message app for getting Customer Support from over 170 brands/organization, the app is commonly known as WhatsApp for customer support. It is also a messaging app that connects brand experts to customers.

The idea of conceptualising Haptik was discussed in 2012, at a conference on mobile apps when Harish Anand Thilakan (now the Creative Head and MD at Haptik) came up to Aakrit proposing the idea of an app where brands could easily communicate with users. Once the basic version of Haptik was ready, Aakrit and Swapan quit their jobs to start the company in Aug 2013. They have offices in Mumbai and San Francisco, with most of the team currently in Mumbai.

"The next phase will be to gain as many users as possible," said Aakrit Vaish, CEO of the company, whose app has seen 25,000 downloads since the time it went live six months ago.

"We took an exception to Haptik, because the team intrigued us," said Rajesh Raju, managing director of Kalari Capital.

Haptik has a team of 17 people handles everything from marketing to technology and are currently processing about 100,000 messages/month. Their target is to take this to 1m messages/month within 3 months, and 5m messages/month by the end of this year.

Kalaari is Bangalore-based, a $160 million venture capital fund that invests in early-stage, technology-oriented companies in India. Its portfolio companies include Snapdeal, Mynta, Urban Ladder, Bluestone, Magzter, Swipe and Apalya.

Haptik - Text Message for Customer Support from over 170 companies

The Internet has been around for over two decades but we still struggle to find support for services we use. We don't like to wait on the phone and listen to that painful call center music, or sift through endless FAQs. It should be as easy as sending a message, and chatting directly with a real person. Like SMS. Or, given its 2014, like WhatsApp. "Thus Haptik was born out of a personal need when we realized we were using text communication more than any other application on our phones, but still had to use voice for brands and services we use. We also realized that it's generally a pain to find any information related to such companies, and would like to be more in the loop on their products," say the founders Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev.

The idea was discussed in 2012, at a conference on mobile apps when Harish Anand Thilakan (now the Creative Head and MD at Haptik) came up to Aakrit proposing the idea of an app where brands could easily communicate with users. Once the basic version of Haptik was ready, Aakrit and Swapan quit their jobs to start the company in Aug 2013. They have offices in Mumbai and San Francisco, with most of the team currently in Mumbai.

No company in the world is doing customer support and help over mobile messaging in one single app . "We have a very simple premise: download Haptik and never spend time searching for complex information about these companies. Just send a message, and you get a response immediately. That is a huge differentiation with anything else out there and this is driving people to use the app," says Harish. They want to make sure that everyone has a great experience using the product.

One can download the app here and get the best of customer services from over 170 companies instantly.

"Our technology stack is based on Python/Django, and mobile native iOS and Android. We are also working on basic NLP/machine learning to improve answer efficiency," says Swapna, who also created the 'Snake Classic' app in 2010. The team of 17 people handles everything from marketing to technology and are currently processing about 100,000 messages/month. Their target is to take this to 1m messages/month within 3 months, and 5m messages/month by the end of this year. “We are aggressively hiring on our expert staff both in Mumbai and Chennai. We are also looking to expand on engineering, product development and sales,” adds Swapna. They plan to start experimenting with foreign markets by the end of this year.

They are currently fully bootstrapped but in the process of raising external financing. As a message for future entrepreneurs, Aakrit says, "Do something only because you have an idea you cannot stop thinking about, a great founding team to go do it with, and some validation from the market that it will work. Do not do it because it's 'cool' or to 'make money'."