Wipro and Microsoft Launch a Suite of GenAI-powered Virtual Assistants for Financial Services

Wipro has partnered with Microsoft to launch a suite of Generative AI-powered virtual assistants specifically designed for the financial services sector. These virtual assistants will operate on Microsoft Azure Open AI and will be accessible through Azure App Services. The suite includes Wipro GenAI Investor Intelligence, Wipro GenAI Investor Onboarding, and Wipro GenAI Loan Origination.

These AI-powered assistants aim to provide deep market intelligence and relevant, timely information on investment products and investor behavior. They are expected to help accelerate the investor onboarding process, reduce the time taken for documentation, and resolve queries more efficiently. This collaboration is a significant step in the integration of advanced AI technologies in the financial services industry, offering innovative solutions to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency.

The Wipro GenAI-powered cognitive assistants for financial services, developed in collaboration with Microsoft, are designed to enhance the efficiency and experience of financial professionals. Here's how you can access them:

1. Wipro GenAI Investor Intelligence: This virtual assistant provides in-depth market insights and timely updates on investment options and customer behavior. It aims to empower financial advisors with better and faster market and product intelligence, enabling them to deliver personalized and timely service to clients.
2. Wipro GenAI Investor Onboarding: Streamlining the investor onboarding process, this assistant reduces the time taken for documentation. It assists in validating documents efficiently and offers helpful responses to investor queries.
3. Wipro GenAI Loan Origination: For loan origination, this virtual assistant simplifies the process by cutting down paperwork and repetitive steps. It ensures a smoother experience for both financial professionals and their clients.

Integration with Existing Platforms:

• These cognitive assistants are integrated with existing digital platforms, ensuring a seamless experience for users.
• They operate on Microsoft Azure Open AI and are accessible through Azure App Services.
• Leveraging Microsoft Azure Document Intelligence, they extract text, key-value pairs, and structures from documents to turn them into actionable data.

Wipro's commitment to cutting-edge solutions in the financial services sector, combined with Microsoft's technology, promises exceptional client experiences and increased productivity.

Wipro’s new GenAI-powered cognitive assistants will run on Microsoft Azure Open AI and will be available on Azure App Services.

NebulARC Successfully Solved Inefficiencies in Logistics For Numerous Large-scale Companies in India

Equipped enterprises with AI-based Virtual Assistant to help them take immediate actions based on predictive insights~

NebulARC, one of India’s fastest-growing logistics SaaS platforms, has successfully enabled numerous organisations in India to orchestrate their supply chains and gain real-time predictive visibility for intelligent decision-making. It has helped businesses in Pharma, Agriculture, Retail, Warehousing, Manufacturing, and the logistics space to save huge costs resulting from inefficiencies and lack of real-time visibility across the entire supply chain.

Founded in 2018 by Alok Sharma and Aman Bhatnagar, NebulARC is setting new benchmarks in the logistics SaaS space. The company works with large enterprises helping them automate the entire supply chain management. Its Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based Virtual Assistant has proven to be a key enabler for businesses by helping them significantly reduce risks of theft, pilferage and other unwanted events such as temperature excursions by providing intelligent alerts and actionable insights.  

Removing the visibility black box for B2B shipments, NebulARC has created a one-stop-shop for its customers, catering to their varied needs right from Vendor Assessment and Optimisation, Order Fill Rate Analytics, Inventory Optimisation, Signature and Traceability of high value assets, Freshness and Shelf Life Management for Perishables, Effective Route Planning, to Location Tracking in real-time. 

Commenting on the same, Alok Sharma, CEO & Co-founder, NebulARC stated, “We consider this an achievement to have helped numerous large-scale companies in the last one year in eliminating complexities in their logistics operations and bringing down costs by a significant share. The year 2020 has brought transformational changes for businesses. Organisations have started paying increased attention to managing their logistics effectively in order to survive in a world impacted by COVID-19.

“We are certain to drive operational excellence for many more businesses in time to come with our unique capabilities. In a bid to do so, we will continue to innovate and invest heavily in cutting-edge technologies to help companies stay ahead of the digital curve.”, he further added.

The company’s mission is to empower its customers to have 24x7 control of goods and assets from the start of their journey until the final destination through comprehensive Asset Lifecycle Management, hence leading end to end visibility and transparency across the entire supply chain. 

Receiving wide acknowledgement,  NebulARC’s BEO was chosen as the best product in India under the Digital Transformation category at the India Mobile Congress 2019. Besides, NebulARC was also selected by the Government of India as the winner of Animal Husbandry Grand Challenge. The company has also won the LogX Accelerator by DP World & Startup Kerala Mission for POCs & PO, among other initiatives. 

About NebulARC

Founded in 2018 by Alok Sharma and Aman Bhatnagar, NebulARC's IoT-powered predictive technology enables enterprises to orchestrate their supply chain and gain real-time visibility to make intelligent decisions that affect their bottom line. 

The company ensures profitable supply chains by providing IoT and AI-based analytics for predictive decision making. With its unique technology, it provides the complete control of goods and assets – when they are in-transit (logistics), at-rest (warehouse and retail) and operations (manufacturing).

With its differentiated product offerings, it helps businesses eliminate inefficiencies and empowers them to achieve operational excellence in a highly competitive and customer-centric environment. NebulARC  has been a key enabler for companies in Agriculture, Logistics, Shipping, Retail & Warehousing, Pharma, Telecom Infra, and Manufacturing industries. 

Feathers of Awards & Accolades attached to its badge:

1. NebulARC’s BEO was chosen as the best product in India under the Digital Transformation category at the India Mobile Congress 2019
2. Accelerated by Turbostart for Founder’s Fellowship program & seed funding
3. Chosen by the Government of India as the winner of Animal Husbandry Grand Challenge 
4. Won the LogX Accelerator by DP World & Startup Kerala Mission for POCs & PO
5. Incubated & supported by NASSCOM under the NASSCOM 10k Startup program
6. Supported by Microsoft US under their Startup program
7. Incubated at IIMK LIVE 

Huawei's New AI Assistant 'Celia' Uses Hybrid Approach to Resolve Consumer Queries

Huawei Consumer Business Group India has introduced a new intelligent virtual agent called 'Celia' to enrich consumer experience. The feature is made available as an integrated part of the company's service app, Support as well as on the website, consumer.huawei.com/in, ready to assist Huawei India users anywhere, anytime. The AI powered virtual assistant responds to the key phrase "Hey Celia" and has high ability to field questions and address customer queries.

This smart assistant is available 24*7 and supports quick troubleshooting with seamless transition from chat to human agent, without any delay in processing new information request. Celia has the capability to provide guidance in buying a new phone, warranty queries, locating device's problem and completing all prerequisites before sending the device for repair.

Celia's arrival underlines Huawei's commitment to deliver the latest technological advances to consumers across the globe. It comes with a multi-function interface, multi-round operation and multiple styles of answers making it easier to understand. The answers are displayed in the form of text, links, collection, pictures as well as GIF and JPGs. Celia provides precise answers which could be on detailed parameters and specifications and transfers the chat to online human agent on request.



"We constantly strive to introduce breakthrough innovations to our consumers. Through Celia, we want to add value and provide convenience by resolving personalised queries. It empowers users to control functions with the help of an intelligent assistant. Huawei will continue to offer resilient AI offerings to enhance consumer experience," said Huawei Spokesperson.

Celia takes a step-by-step route to give users the most efficient solution to their problems. The user needs to tap on the scenario and related answers pop up. Both Celia and human agent is always ready to help the customer whenever required, providing convenience by making access to information and services simple, quick and frictionless.

Celia is now available on Huawei's official web and support application.

About Huawei Consumer BG

Huawei's products and services are available in more than 170 countries and are used by a third of the world's population. Fifteen R&D centres have been set up in the United States, Germany, Sweden, Russia, India and China. Huawei Consumer BG is one of Huawei's three business units and covers smartphones, PC and tablets, wearables and cloud services, etc. Huawei's global network is built on almost 30 years of expertise in the telecom industry and is dedicated to delivering the latest technological advances to consumers around the world.

Netcore Solutions helps Flipkart Reimagine Customer Engagement through Big B Virtual Assistant on WhatsApp

The e-commerce major witnessed almost 20000 hours of customer engagement through the Netcore-built custom assistant during the Big Billion Days sale

Netcore Solutions, a pioneer in SaaS-based Multi-Channel Marketing Automation, AI/ML-powered Martech, and Contextual CPaaS, today announced the incredible success of its Big B virtual assistant on WhatsApp built for Flipkart’s recent Big Billion Days sale.

Netcore helped Flipkart leverage Facebook's Click-to-WhatsApp feature on Facebook Ads by allowing users the real-time experience to chat over WhatsApp with a virtual assistant modelled on the persona of none other than the Big B, Amitabh Bachchan, himself. 

With almost 1.3 lakh unique users engaging in over 9.8 lakh interactions with the Big B virtual assistant over a span of only 5 days, Netcore helped Flipkart scale customer engagement to incredible new highs. In fact, the total time spent by users on the WhatsApp virtual assistant was upwards of 20000 hours, with an average session lasting almost 7 minutes.

This also helped add another entertaining dimension to Flipkart’s flagship Big Billion Days sale, enthralling digital customers across the country.

This one-of-a-kind campaign helped Flipkart engage their target audience on a channel of their preference, writing a new chapter in the evolution of conversational commerce in India. 

Working closely with the teams at Flipkart and WhatsApp, the Netcore-built virtual assistant was able to offer audiences a unique conversational experience. The Big B virtual assistant offered customized category-specific offers on various products based on the audience’s performance in an engaging quiz format. Launched in both Hindi and English, the campaign took into account the large segments of the target audience from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. 

The super-simple interface went all the way down to the use of pre-selected emojis. By merely sending a single emoji, customers received real-time updates on products under that category, shortening the buyer journey significantly. 

Apart from this, audiences could purchase products, apply for shopping loans, or view video messages from various celebrities who were part of the Big Billion Days sale promotional campaign. These video messages were unlocked on progressing to different stages of an interactive game.  The overwhelming response to the campaign had customers and tech insiders raving about the industry-first concept across social media.

Vikas Gupta, Head of Marketing at Flipkart said, "We are a customer first company that takes pride in pioneering industry-first innovations. Given WhatsApp’s large footprint, we wanted to leverage it to connect deeply with our customers. And that’s why we created The Big B WhatsApp virtual assistant during this Big Billion Days, a unique tech-led engagement model in association with Facebook and our technology partners, Netcore. It made use of several loved features such as emojis, images, and audio - to create a truly engaging experience. We were able to drive almost 1 million interactions with an impressive 7 minutes of engagement per session to drive nearly 20,000 hours of engagement with this initiative."

Kalpit Jain, Group Chief Executive Officer at Netcore stated, “Today, we exist in a multi-channel environment. In this era of conversational commerce, brands need to engage with their customers in real-time across instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp to deliver differentiated customer experiences. That was the focus when we started building out the Big B virtual assistant for Flipkart. We didn’t want it to be just a gimmick, but wanted to actually power value-driven conversations at scale for Flipkart. We are thrilled to have partnered with a like-minded, innovative company such as Flipkart and look forward to empowering brands fuel personalised customer engagement through WhatsApp as an effective channel of conversion and communication.”   

About Netcore Solutions

Netcore, a global marketing technology company offers solutions to help brands and enterprises with customer acquisition, engagement, and retention. The first and leading Marketing Automation, Analytics and AI/ ML solutions provider in India, Netcore was established in 1997 by Mr Rajesh Jain, an Internet pioneer. Netcore’s product suite includes Smartech and Pepipost. Smartech is an AI-powered growth marketing platform. Pepipost is an API-based transactional email delivery platform. 

Netcore serves a strong base of 5000+ enterprises across industry verticals such as Thomas Cook, Go Air, Cleartrip, HDFC, Kotak, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, MakeMyTrip, Lenskart, Swiggy, Myntra, BabyChakra, Dream11, Reliance, Vodafone, ITC, OLA, Pfizer, and OLX. Additionally, it also serves international brands such as PizzaHut Malaysia, Malindo Airlines, Philippine Airlines, Seek Asia, Tokopedia, Blibli, Standard Chartered, FCMB, GT Bank, and many more. Netcore, with its’ innovative marketing technology, delivers 8+ Billion emails and 3+ Billion SMSs a month, creating 11+ Billion customer connects monthly, handling 30+ Billion events a month. Netcore is headquartered in Mumbai, India with offices in SEA, USA, MEA, and an employee base of 500+. 

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.

Shiksha.com Introduces first ever AI based Assistance Platform for Students

India’s one of the leading college admission and career portal Shiksha.com has come up with the first ever AI based assistance platform for students named ‘Shiksha Assistant’. It’s a one stop platform for extracting relevant information available in millions of topics related to careers, colleges, courses and exams on Shiksha’s site. It makes it possible for a student to instantly get an answer to his query without searching for information.

Shiksha assistant like other assistant will answer all higher education related queries of a student. System will interact with the students to give answers to any queries from college details, exam details, career to course details. It tries to provide the exact information which student is trying to find out with the information available on Shiksha. After providing the solution to the query, it will also provide a link to the student to navigate for more information available on the query.

Shiksha Assistant uses multiple Artificial intelligence technologies & techniques to give an answer to students’ queries. Firstly, it tries to understand the intent of students’ queries. Secondly by using NLP (Natural language processing), it tries to understand what all topics it can serve as per the query. Based on that, it tries matching the students’ intent with topics to extract the precise details required from the information available within the topics. Shiksha Assistant tries to build the context of queries and provide relevant results based on previous conversations with the student or the information student is exploring on the portal.

Mr. Vivek Jain, Chief Business Officer, Shiksha.com says, "We proudly announce the introduction of ‘Shiksha Assistant’- the first ever Assistance Platform for Students. It’s an interactive platform that tries to understand the user doubts by enabling a conversation. Now search is made easier and simpler for students on Shiksha. With Shiksha Assistant, students need not have to read every bit of information in finding their desired details nor have to spend time in searching for information within these topics. Beside this, Shiksha Assistant also drives conversation with students by recommending more new relevant information for them to discover based on the popular topics looked out by the similar profile of students.”

Considering aggressive need of information during the engineering and MBA admission season, the Shiksha Assistant tool has been designed to reduce the burden of students in making a right decision while visiting Shiksha portal for Engineering students at https://www.shiksha.com/b-tech/jee-main-exam and for MBA students at https://www.shiksha.com/mba/cat-exam in search of their requirement.

Shiksha Assistant provides data driven reliable information available on Shiksha within seconds to a student. The robust system can handle millions of student queries at any point of time.

AI-Powered Virtual Assistant Maker FrontdeskAI Raises $2 Mn from pi Ventures

FrontdeskAI, the leading developer of artificial intelligence (AI) assistants for small businesses, and the fastest adopted AI assistant in the wellness market, today announced it has closed an additional $2 million in funding, bringing its total seed funding to $4.2 million.

This pre-series A round of funding was led by pi Ventures, India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT and Blockchain focused early stage venture fund. The funds will help FrontdeskAI accelerate product development, increase customer acquisition and investigate new vertical markets.

Previous seed rounds include $1.1 million in June 2018, led by Blue Pointe Capital and $1.1 million in November 2018, led by Speciale Invest. pi Ventures’ partner, Abishek Surendran, will join the FrontdeskAI board that already includes BluePointe Ventures managing partner, Sandeep Sardana, and Speciale Invest managing partner, Vishesh Rajaram.

FrontdeskAI creates AI
assistants specifically for small businesses that rely
on appointment-based products and
services for their revenue. The company’s current AI assistant portfolio serves
the wellness market including the spa, salon and fitness industries. The
wellness market is globally valued at $4.2 trillion and is growing twice as
fast as global economic growth. FrontdeskAI customer
acquisition is currently growing 17% month on month, subscription revenue is
growing 25% month on month, and churn is amongst the lowest in the industry at
less than 3% per month.

FrontdeskAI
assistants help manage appointments, class scheduling, rescheduling, all forms
of customer and service specific enquiries, and can execute highly targeted and
intelligent marketing campaigns. They are powered by a set of proprietary
algorithms, a proprietary database of B2C natural language interactions, and
knowledge graphs. Over time, they build a rich source of information about
customer requirements, preferences and usage patterns. By tapping into the
FrontdeskAI knowledge graph, the AI assistants are expert and up and running
immediately on deployment. To create human empathy, FrontdeskAI provides a
second layer of intelligence comprising human trainers to groom the AI
assistant to speak in the style and tone of the customer brand. The AI
assistant becomes independent over time building knowledge and experience from
all its interactions.

Srivatsan
Laxman, CEO, FrontdeskAI, said “We are laser focused on developing affordable
and easy-to- use AI assistants for small businesses. The market
traction we have already achieved is exciting. Our customers report a 30% increase
in revenue, 20% increase in new client registrations, and a significant
reduction in class drop-outs. With the additional funding and the
partnership with pi Ventures we are now in a position to
deepen our IP and competitive barriers to market entry.”

Abishek Surendran, Partner, pi Ventures, said, “We are excited about partnering with FrontdeskAI
which has developed a world class AI assistant for the small and medium
enterprise market. Their deep learning-based AI engine
means that companies can provide superior customer experiences at very low
costs. We look forward to supporting Srivatsan and the FrontdeskAI leadership
team to accelerate and expand upon the market advantage they have created.”

About
FrontdeskAI Founded in 2017 and
headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, FrontdeskAI creates AI solutions for
the un-sung heroes of the global economy – the small businesses.
FrontdeskAI has democratized the AI market by bringing affordable and tailored
solutions to main street.

The
company is the fastest adopted AI solution for the spa, salon and fitness
industries. Embodied in ‘Sasha’, the most advanced AI powered
assistant for small business, FrontdeskAI solutions deliver high impact
productivity, efficiency, revenue and customer retention advantages within
weeks of deployment.

About FrontdeskAI founders:

Srivatsan Laxman Ph.D., co-founder and CEO, is an expert in
the field of artificial intelligence, information retrieval and data privacy.
Prior to FrontdeskAI, he founded Scibler which developed an iOS mobile AI
assistant to manage appointments directly from email conversations and calendar
updates. He also spent seven years in the Machine Learning & Optimization
group at Microsoft Research.

Supriya Rao Ph.D., co-founder and CTO, has over 15
years’ experience building intelligent systems including developing natural
language processing-based business intelligence solutions at Strand
Life Sciences, and designing surveillance computer vision-based video
products for Honeywell Technology Solutions.

About pi Ventures, it is India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT and Blockchain focused early stage venture fund. pi is a $33 Million fund based in Bangalore, India, and invests around $1 million per startup. pi Ventures focuses on healthcare, logistics, retail, fin-tech and enterprise sectors.

Last November, NIRAMAI Health Analytix, a deep tech powered health technology startup, had raised about ₹50 crore in funding from Pi Ventures and others.

Backed by some of the leading entrepreneurs globally as well as IFC of World Bank group, pi Ventures brings hands-on product and entrepreneurial experience to the India venture investing ecosystem.

Airtel Collaborates with Google to Enable Its AI Assistant Answer Customer Queries

Indian telecom giant Bharti Airtel has collaborated with tech giant Google in order to enable its customers to be able to interact with customer care through Google Assistant, which is an artificial intelligence (AI) powered virtual assistant developed by Google that is primarily available on mobile and smart home devices.

With this, Airtel users will now be able to interact with Google's virtual assistant to get answers to various queries pertaining to their subscribed plans, data usage and account balance.

Launched as a part of Airtel's Project Next - Airtel's digital innovation program, this feature is currently available in English and will eventually be rolled out in regional languages as well in order to deliver a personalized experience to millions of smartphone users, the company said in a statement.

Available for both, the postpaid and prepaid users, the Google Assistant feature works both on Android and iOS smartphones. While the prepaid users will be able to inquire details about their data balance, offers, account balance and recharge details, the postpaid will be able to ask Google Assistant information about their outstanding balance, bill summary, current data usage, details about their current plans, and details about other postpaid plans.

Airtel will track what questions customers are asking and enable responses to them via Google Assistant.

How Airtel Customers can Use Google Assistant Feature

• Android users -
  
  Long press the home button to launch Google Assistant,




• iOS users -
  
  Download Google Assistant on their iPhones or any Apple device.

1. Once the Google Assistant is ready, users can say-- "Talk to Airtel", "Ask Airtel" or "Get Airtel" to open Airtel assistant within Google Assistant.




2. To get the account details, for the first time, the Airtel assistant will ask users to link their Airtel accounts with their Google accounts.




3. Once users click yes, they will be asked to enter their mobile numbers and accept the Terms of Service.



4. Once they have accepted the Terms of service, they will receive an OTP.




5. Once they enter the OTP, their Airtel accounts will be linked with Google.

Source - Gadgets.NDTV.com

[Top Image - Youtube.com/Beebom]

Axis Bank Launches ‘Axis Aha!’ - An AI-Led Virtual Assistant to Enhance Online Customer Experience

Conversational Banking’ has turned a new leaf with the launch of ‘Axis Aha!’, an efficient virtual assistant powered by cutting-edge technology which includes proprietary Artificial Intelligence and machine learning algorithms.

‘Conversational Banking’ has turned a new leaf with the launch of ‘Axis Aha!’, an efficient virtual assistant powered by cutting-edge technology which includes proprietary Artificial Intelligence and machine learning algorithms. This unique chatbot provides relevant and contextual responses to customer queries and even helps make transactions on the chat window itself. Customers can initiate transactions either through voice or chat. This transactional innovation is a ground-breaking way to enable customers to execute transactions, explore products and avail banking services using simple words used in our daily conversations.

Currently hosted on the home page of the Bank website, www.axisbank.com, ‘Axis Aha!’ is capable of performing diverse actions like fund transfer, bill payments, recharges and also manage card limits, block credit and debit cards, besides others. The voice and chat interface also provides customers an opportunity to query on any of his banking needs. Axis Aha is a part of the Bank’s continuous endeavor to simplify banking by the extensive use of technology. This interface will gradually be extended to the Mobile banking app and the Internet Banking application.

Sharing his thoughts on the launch of ‘Axis Aha!’, Praveen Bhatt, Head - Digital Banking & Customer Experience, Axis Bank, said, “The launch of ‘Axis Aha!’ takes the customer-centricity approach of the bank to an entirely different level as it lays a very strong foundation for artificial intelligence based voice and chat enabled ‘conversational banking’. In a time-starved world, Axis Aha with its unique action orientation offers customers the benefit of completing simple transactions either through voice or chat in the very moment without having to navigate through any other channel.”

Some unique features of ‘Axis Aha!’ are as follows:

State of the art technology:

• ‘Axis Aha!’ is powered by cutting-edge algorithms leveraging concepts of artificial intelligence and machine learning



• It is capable of crafting intelligent micro-conversations to guide, execute, suggest, remind and simplify basic banking for the customers



• The chatbot resides on a comprehensive banking knowledge base along with self-learning algorithms continuously improve the experience

Rich Features:

• ‘Axis Aha!’ currently provides the following capabilities – funds transfer, bill payment, recharge, block card, manage debit card



• Upcoming features include ordering cheque book, card pin set /reset, card limit change, download e-statement/loan statement, apply for loans, cards, etc.



• The chatbot is fast; customers can straight away state their needs and it will be serviced without getting lost in the sea of navigation panels



• It also can answer and guide customers with their queries regarding Axis Bank products and services, address grievances, apart from tracking application status as well as reporting fraud

Via - BusinessWire India

Google is Investing in Startups To Make Its 'Assistant' Smarter, Here's How To Apply

Search giant Google is welcoming companies across a diverse range of fields, including startups that are developing technologies that broaden Google Assistant’s set of features, or are building new hardware devices for digital assistants, or that focus on a particular industry such as travel, games, or hospitality. The Google Assistant is a virtual assistant (like Apple's Siri) developed by Google that is primarily available on mobile and smart home devices.

The new initiative will include investment capital from Google to provide additional financial resources for the development, hiring and management of these startups.

The startups will get advice from Google engineers, product managers and design experts to share technical guidance and product development feedback.

".. we're opening a new investment program for early-stage startups that share our passion for the digital assistant ecosystem, helping to push new ideas forward and advance the possibilities of what digital assistants can do," announced Sanjay Kapoor, Vice President, Corporate Development at Google, in a blog post on Wednesday.

The programme will let startups access to the Google Cloud Platform — the suite of cloud computing services that run on the same infrastructure that it uses for products like Google Search and YouTube.

The first batch of investments has startups includes -- GoMoment, a creator of “Ivy”, a 24/7 concierge for hotel guests, capable of providing instant answers to common questions; Edwin, that prepares students looking to take English as a foreign language tests such as the “Test of English as a Foreign Language” (TOEFL); BotSociety, a startup that has created a tool that allows developers to design, prototype and user test voice interfaces; and Pulse Labs, that helps voice application designers understand what their users want to do by letting them test their applications with real people, quickly acquire in-depth insights, and use that feedback to refine the experience.

Interested companies and startups that have big ideas and are interested in partnering with the Google Assistant team can reach out to apply through this Google Assistant investment form.

It may be recalled that, last week, Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. has shared a result from its years of sizeable startup investing for the first time disclosing that its startup holdings are worth about $11 billion.

Alphabet is one of the most prolific corporate investors in startups. In 2017, Crunchbase data shows that these three main investing arms of Alphabet along with Google itself has invested in 103 deals.

Google is Investing in Startups To Make Its 'Assistant' Smarter, Here's How To Apply

Search giant Google is welcoming companies across a diverse range of fields, including startups that are developing technologies that broaden Google Assistant’s set of features, or are building new hardware devices for digital assistants, or that focus on a particular industry such as travel, games, or hospitality. The Google Assistant is a virtual assistant (like Apple's Siri) developed by Google that is primarily available on mobile and smart home devices.

The new initiative will include investment capital from Google to provide additional financial resources for the development, hiring and management of these startups.

The startups will get advice from Google engineers, product managers and design experts to share technical guidance and product development feedback.

".. we're opening a new investment program for early-stage startups that share our passion for the digital assistant ecosystem, helping to push new ideas forward and advance the possibilities of what digital assistants can do," announced Sanjay Kapoor, Vice President, Corporate Development at Google, in a blog post on Wednesday.

The programme will let startups access to the Google Cloud Platform — the suite of cloud computing services that run on the same infrastructure that it uses for products like Google Search and YouTube.

The first batch of investments has startups includes -- GoMoment, a creator of “Ivy”, a 24/7 concierge for hotel guests, capable of providing instant answers to common questions; Edwin, that prepares students looking to take English as a foreign language tests such as the “Test of English as a Foreign Language” (TOEFL); BotSociety, a startup that has created a tool that allows developers to design, prototype and user test voice interfaces; and Pulse Labs, that helps voice application designers understand what their users want to do by letting them test their applications with real people, quickly acquire in-depth insights, and use that feedback to refine the experience.

Interested companies and startups that have big ideas and are interested in partnering with the Google Assistant team can reach out to apply through this Google Assistant investment form.

It may be recalled that, last week, Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. has shared a result from its years of sizeable startup investing for the first time disclosing that its startup holdings are worth about $11 billion.

Alphabet is one of the most prolific corporate investors in startups. In 2017, Crunchbase data shows that these three main investing arms of Alphabet along with Google itself has invested in 103 deals.

Anatomy of Bots, Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

While many of us might be familiar with the term "bot" and even be using numerous of them in our daily lives, but when it comes to defining the term, we draw a blank. Since they're such inclusive part of our lives, we should have a basic understanding of what they are and what do they do.

To put it simply, the type of bot that we're talking about here is any kind of software that is capable of running automated tasks over the internet. But one must take into consideration that this is a big blanket that includes both malicious and beneficial technology alike.

The usage of bots by search engines to spread the web and archive new pages for future searchability purposes is considered as one of the most positive, important, and far-reaching examples of bot. On the other hand, they're also used for various malicious purposes, like artificially increasing views on web articles or YouTube videos or transmitting computer viruses. But, as they say every coin has two sides.

The recent times have seen a unprecedented increase in the popularity of chatbots and the amount of artificial intelligence being used in them, which has ultimately led to bots frequenting our daily tech updates.

What is a Chatbot?

Voice recognition and Artificial Intelligence technologies have been responsible for precipitating a new crop of technologies known as the so-called virtual assistants and chatbots. Apple's much-famous Siri is a bot, so are Microsoft's Cortana and tech giant Google's Alexa. But the list is getting longer by the day with numerous brands coming up with their own specialised chatbots. For example, Taco Bell recently launched TacoBot and Starbucks has its own chatbot barista. Closer home, LawRato.com, India’s leading lawyer search and legal advice platform launched country’s first self-help Facebook messenger chatbot last year Nicknamed “LawBot." The chatbot lets users search for legal answers, ask a free legal question and find the best lawyer for their legal requirement.

It was only last year that Microsoft's Indian born CEO Satya Nadella asserted that "bots are the new apps." While at the time he made the announcement, a lot of people in the real world weren't ready to buy his thought. Even now, the real world hasn't made up its mind about the importance of bots as its underlying technology hasn't evolved much since last year.

Why do bots matter?

There are several reasons why the general public needs to get acquainted with bots.

While it remains to be seen if bots become the primary way humans interface with technology, but one thing is for sure, they're becoming more and more capable by each passing day. Even in the scenario they aren't successful in overtaking the way humans use their personal devices, they are surely going the bear the responsibility of a lot of behind-the-scenes work.

Bots are known to offer humans a lot of benefits. They automate several inefficient human tasks, thus saving them time and resources. In fact, there a bots in the market that are helping humans conduct business, clean floors and even enhancing elder care.

But, before we end up being too dependent and deep into bots, we need to understand some of the important complications and downsides associated with the technology. As bots and their AI backing is becoming more pervasive and powerful by the day, it

However, there are important complications and downsides to understand. As bots and the AI backing them become more powerful and pervasive, it presents several sociological concerns. What will happen if these end up automating our jobs? Or if they work incorrectly, or if they get out of control?

Hence, the future would require the humans to have a deeper understanding about bots in order to apply that critical thinking for the betterment of the world around them. For instance, bots can help in fighting the war against fake news, which is currently being considered as one of the most important internet-age problems.