Chatbot Firm Niki.ai Raises ₹11.6 Crore in Convertible Debt Funding from Unilazer, RSP India, Others

Bengaluru-based Niki.ai, an AI-powered chatbot service startup, has been raising a convertible debt funding since February this year. According to RoC filings accessed by YourStory, Niki.ai has secured around Rs 11.6 crore in covertible debt funding from investors that include Unilazer Alternative Ventures LLP, RSP India Fund LLC, Tarun Nayyar, Vistra ITCL as a trustee of AL trust, Asian E-commerce Alliance, Hansjoachim Koehler of HJK Capital, and Ramakant Sharma, Co-founder and COO of Livspace, among others.

The startup had received Rs 7.8 crore in February and Rs 3.8 crore between March and May.

Backed by Tata Chairman Ratan Tata, and SAP.iO among others, Niki.ai boast of a 3mn+ user-base, a massive 430% revenue growth in FY18 along with 75+ partners on board such as HDFC bank, ICICI Bank, Federal Bank and Intex to name a few.

In June 2017, Niki.ai secured $2 million in Series A round of funding from San Francisco based fund SAP.iO and existing investor Ronnie Screwvala's Unilazer Ventures. The funding also saw participation from other Indian investors including Haresh Chawla (Partner at True North) and Arihant Patni, along with some US and German investors.

In September 2017, Infosys Finacle tied up with Niki.ai to provide chat-based service to its banking customers.

The AI startup currently provides 20+ services to over 2 million consumers ranging from utility services like mobile recharge, bill payments, travel services like cabs, buses, hotels and entertainment services like movies and events. The startup is planning to offer services for flights and healthcare industry.

Founded in May 2015 by Nitin Babel, Shishir Modi, Keshav Prawasi, and Sachin Jaiswal, Niki.ai is touted as India’s first fully automated chat bot app with no human intervention.

In a report published early this year, AI Chatbots and Cross Channel marketing are voted as the Top 2 most promising marketing technologies for the India marketer in 2019.

Last month, a Pune-based AI chatbot start-up, Quinto.ai, got acquired by Netcore Solutions, a Global Marketing technology company. With the IP and talent acquisition, Netcore gets access to Quinto's conversational AI-powered chatbot engine and its employees. Quinto’s co-founder Hrishikesh Rajpathak also joins Netcore as Chief Data Scientist and will lead its Machine Learning and Conversation Analytics initiatives.

Last August, Richard Socher, the Chief Scientist at Salesforce, had invested in Visit, an AI driven Chatbot for health advice. Based out of Delhi, Visit also counts Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Snapdeal founders - Kunal Bahl & Rohit Bansal, as its backers.

[Top Image - (Left to right) Nitin Babel, Sachin Jaiswal, Shishir Modi and Keshav Prawasi via Forbes India]

Netcore Acquires Quinto.ai, an AI Chatbot Startup in an All IP and Talent Deal

Netcore Solutions, a Global Marketing technology company, has acquired Pune-based Quinto.ai, an AI chatbot start-up. With the IP and talent acquisition, Netcore gets access to Quinto's conversational AI-powered chatbot engine and its employees. Quinto’s co-founder Hrishikesh Rajpathak also joins Netcore as Chief Data Scientist and will lead its Machine Learning and Conversation Analytics initiatives. Hrishikesh comes with over 12 years of experience in Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies. He has worked with multiple international clients in life sciences and BFSI domain as an AI consultant. He co-founded Quinto 4 years back as a food recommendation platform which later pivoted to a conversational AI platform.

Quinto enables businesses to automate conversations with customers and improve customer experience. Businesses across verticals can use Quinto.ai’s always-on 24x7 chatbot for automated product discovery, recommendations, Inside sales and Live chat. Quinto can be integrated with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack and other popular chat platforms.

With Quinto, Netcore’s Smartech gets capability of handling conversations in automation journeys riding on Quinto. This will be an industry first feature. With Hrishikesh onboard, Netcore will further strengthen its leadership through the AI/ML platform “Raman” and will foray into the Conversational Analytics space.

Kalpit Jain, Group CEO, Netcore Solutions said, “With the growth of Chat Platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, Voice Assistants like Siri and Alexa, as well as Smart Speakers, it’s no surprise that Gartner predicts that by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. We believe that Conversational AI will be a strategic asset for Marketers in their Martech stack and it will reshape how brands and customers interact with each other.”

Hrishikesh Rajpathak said, “What makes this a great deal is the synergy between Netcore’s focus on conversational marketing and Quinto’s AI chatbot platform. I am excited to be a part of Netcore and contribute towards its next-gen initiatives across domains of marketing and sales automation."

Quinto was earlier backed by Rebel Foods Pvt Ltd (formerly known as Faasos Food Services Pvt Ltd), who now exits with this deal.

The deal was managed by Investment Bank Equirus Capital through Propeluss, a smart deal-making platform.
About Netcore

Netcore, a global Marketing Technology company that offers solutions to help brands and enterprises in 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 Email sending product.

Netcore serves a strong base of 3000+ enterprises across industry verticals, like Jet Airways, Thomas Cook, Go Air, Clear Trip, HDFC, Kotak, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, UTI, Facebook, Reliance, Vodafone, Godrej , ITC, OLA, Pfizer, OLX along with International brands Seek Asia, Tokopedia, Blibli, Standard Chartered, FCMB, GT Bank and many more. Netcore, with its’ innovative marketing technology, delivers 7+ Billion emails & 3+ Billion SMSs a month, creating 11+ Billion Customer Connects monthly and handles 30+ Billion Events a month. Netcore is headquartered in Mumbai, India with offices in SEA, USA, MEA and an employee base of 500+.

[Published via feed from BusinessWire India]

Delhi-based Health Advise Chatbot Visit Receives Funding from Salesforce Chief Scientist Richard Socher

Visit, an artificial intelligence (AI) driven Chatbot for health advice, which already counts Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Snapdeal founders - Kunal Bahl & Rohit Bansal, as its backers, has again roped in an another popular figure as its investor as it received an undisclosed amount of funding from Richard Socher, the Chief Scientist at Salesforce.

Socher, a Stanford alumni and a leader in the field of AI based in Silicon Valley, US, has invested in his personal capacity in Visit. Visit is Socher's third investment so far as prior to this he has invested in Israel-based Zebra Medical Vision, a medical imaging insights platform, and Luka, a software development company based in San Francisco, California.

With Socher joining Delhi-based Visit as an investor, Anurag Prasad, co-founder of Visit, said, "Richard's massive expertise in the field of AI will help us strengthen our product and machine learning efforts by leaps and bounds."



Richard Socher, on this investment, said, "The visit app is one of the most exciting combinations of human and artificial intelligence, helping people get fast, accurate and affordable advice on their health."

Founded in 2016 by BITS Pilani alumni Anurag, Shashvat Tripathi, Chetan Anand and Vaibhav Singh, Visit Internet Service Pvt. Ltd is headquartered in Delhi and offers personal healthcare assistant/chatbot for health queries and also provides a tele-health platform to connect to healthcare specialists. It connects users with over 2,000 doctors and specialists for treatments, prescriptions and counselling.

"Users engage with the Visit Chatbot by describing their symptoms and the bot poses a series of questions to predict the most probable diagnosis," explained Anurag.

In April, this year, the startup had grabbed undisclosed funding from Biz Stone, who is one of the founders of microblogging site Twitter.

According to a survey report by Oracle, it was revealed that about 80 per cent of the companies surveyed are interested in making use of chatbots within a period of next 4 years so as to take their customer service to another level.

Besides being the chief scientist at Salesforce, a global CRM solutions provider, Richard Socher was also the founder and CEO/CTO of AI startup MetaMind that was acquired by Salesforce in 2016. Metamind is an automatic image recognition powered by AI.

Recent Chatbot Startups Activities

In March this year, mobile handset manufacturer Micromax had invested in an AI-enabled Chatbot startup 'One Labs', which has developed a chatbot similar to Apple's Siri and Google Assistant.

In July 2017 Freshworks (formerly Freshdesk) acquired a chatbot startup called Joe Hukum, which too was based out of Gurgaon. Later, in the same year, an another Gurgaon based AI chatbot startup iDelivr got acquired by Phonon Communications.

The year 2017 was dominated by various chatbot activities as Amazon launched chatbot tools for developers, to help them build chat features into their own app while Microsoft launched India-specific chatbot called Ruuh, which later got wind up by the company however.

[Top Featured Image - Visit co-founders | Via - Visit@ Facebook]

News sourced from Economic Times

Micromax Invests in Gurgaon-based Chatbot App Startup 'One Labs' To Pre-Embed In Its Devices

India's mobile handset manufacturer Micromax has invested in an artificial intelligence-enabled Chatbot startup 'One Labs', which has developed chat bot like Apple's Siri and Google Assistant. The amount of investment has not been disclosed however.

With this, Micromax Informatics -- the world’s 10th largest handset maker -- will bring users closer to smarter user experiences. The move further highlights Micromax’s focus towards providing best in class services to its consumers, by strategically collaborating with top partners to provide customized offerings to its users. In the past, Micromax has partnered with and made investment in some of the leading technology startups like Ixigo, Healthifyme, IndusOS, Gaana.com and others, to develop strategically relevant deployments of software that leverage its consumer footprint. Notably, in early 2017 Micromax had setup a $100 million fund for investing in startups.

The homegrown mobile handset maker is seeking recognition beyond just a mobile handset manufacturer and thus with investments in new-age startups, aims to diversify its offerings. Since 2015, its trying to match up with brands like Apple and Samsung. In the same year, the company had also filed for four of hardware patents.

The funding will be used by the startup for further product development and have 200+ apps on the platform within the next 12 months by opening inOne to third party developers and making it an instant app platform. Combining 50+ apps in less than 10 Mb required a mammoth tech effort and the team has several patents in the pipeline on their technology.

One Labs was founded in 2015 by Rahul Gupta from IIT Kanpur/IIM Bangalore/Cornell University, Ankit Sharma from PEC Chandigarh and Aashish Gupta from PEC Chandigarh. They have raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Puneet Gupta of Executive Director at Goldman Sachs, Savio Joseph Director of UBS and Vinay Gupta Executive Director of DBS.

The flagship product of One Labs, ‘inOne’ is a a services conglomerate and transaction engine app. It can be used to get Movies, Shop, Groceries, Cabs, Home Services and more within a single app.



In addition, One Labs has also created an AI-enabled voice/chatbot solution called One Assistant which packages services provided on ‘inOne’ in a virtual assistant format. The company has released a short comparison on how the One Assistant outperforms Siri and Google Assistant in a variety of use cases.





Comparison of One Assistant with Google Assistant and Siri

Post this funding, ‘inOne’ will be pre-embedded in Micromax devices and will further augment the features available to users on its Around platform.

Vikas Jain, Co-Founder, Micromax Informatics said, “At Micromax our emphasis is to drive innovations through software and services that would add a layer to the device eco-system. A large chunk of our efforts are now concentrated on coming up with products and services which act as solutions to the needs of the fast-evolving consumers, empowering them with the latest technological innovations and eventually becoming an extension of their lifestyle. Given the fact that, artificial intelligence is the future of device ecosystem, we look forward to seeing how the partnership with One Labs will enable us to enhance user experience even further”.

Rahul Gupta, the CEO and Co-founder, One Labs said, “We are proud to be working Micromax to bring over 100 million Micromax consumers closer to our compelling platform. While phone hardware is getting smarter and more efficient, we wanted to make apps smarter. Like Mobiles replaced pagers, we forsee that in a few years all in one apps like inOne will replace the need to download separate apps for different use cases.”

inOne – The All in One App Platform

The inOne platform currently hosts 50+ apps, combined in a neat package of under 10mb and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store. Some of the apps accessible on the inOne platform are Zomato, Ola, Uber, Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Housejoy, Nearbuy, Urban Clap, ixigo and BookMyShow. By virtue of combining apps, inOne enables price comparison across categories. For instance, Shoppr and TabShop @inOne compares prices across Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and Paytm. So whether it is buying a phone or camera or anything else -- the user gets the best price possible.

In addition, the low memory footprint of inOne drastically helps save space of upto 3GB and reduce background activity on your mobile device. This significantly improves the performance and battery life -- a core problem faced by all smartphone users.

Related Reading - Anatomy of Bots, Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

To recall, last July Freshworks (formerly Freshdesk) acquired a chatbot startup called Joe Hukum, which too was based out of Gurgaon. Later, in the same year, an another Gurgaon based AI chatbot startup iDelivr got acquired by Phonon Communications.

The year 2017 was dominated by various chatbot activities as Amazon launched chatbot tools for developers, to help them build chat features into their own app while Microsoft launched India-specific chatbot called Ruuh, which later got wind up by the company however.

According to a survey report by Oracle, it was revealed that about 80 per cent of the companies surveyed are interested in making use of chatbots within a period of next 4 years so as to take their customer service to another level.

Top-Most Image - L to R: Aashish Gupta, Ankit Sharma, Rahul Gupta (Co-Founders inOne), Vikas Jain (Co-Founder Micromax)

Micromax Invests in Gurgaon-based Chatbot App Startup 'One Labs' To Pre-Embed In Its Devices

India's mobile handset manufacturer Micromax has invested in an artificial intelligence-enabled Chatbot startup 'One Labs', which has developed chat bot like Apple's Siri and Google Assistant. The amount of investment has not been disclosed however.

With this, Micromax Informatics -- the world’s 10th largest handset maker -- will bring users closer to smarter user experiences. The move further highlights Micromax’s focus towards providing best in class services to its consumers, by strategically collaborating with top partners to provide customized offerings to its users. In the past, Micromax has partnered with and made investment in some of the leading technology startups like Ixigo, Healthifyme, IndusOS, Gaana.com and others, to develop strategically relevant deployments of software that leverage its consumer footprint. Notably, in early 2017 Micromax had setup a $100 million fund for investing in startups.

The homegrown mobile handset maker is seeking recognition beyond just a mobile handset manufacturer and thus with investments in new-age startups, aims to diversify its offerings. Since 2015, its trying to match up with brands like Apple and Samsung. In the same year, the company had also filed for four of hardware patents.

The funding will be used by the startup for further product development and have 200+ apps on the platform within the next 12 months by opening inOne to third party developers and making it an instant app platform. Combining 50+ apps in less than 10 Mb required a mammoth tech effort and the team has several patents in the pipeline on their technology.

One Labs was founded in 2015 by Rahul Gupta from IIT Kanpur/IIM Bangalore/Cornell University, Ankit Sharma from PEC Chandigarh and Aashish Gupta from PEC Chandigarh. They have raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Puneet Gupta of Executive Director at Goldman Sachs, Savio Joseph Director of UBS and Vinay Gupta Executive Director of DBS.

The flagship product of One Labs, ‘inOne’ is a a services conglomerate and transaction engine app. It can be used to get Movies, Shop, Groceries, Cabs, Home Services and more within a single app.



In addition, One Labs has also created an AI-enabled voice/chatbot solution called One Assistant which packages services provided on ‘inOne’ in a virtual assistant format. The company has released a short comparison on how the One Assistant outperforms Siri and Google Assistant in a variety of use cases.





Comparison of One Assistant with Google Assistant and Siri

Post this funding, ‘inOne’ will be pre-embedded in Micromax devices and will further augment the features available to users on its Around platform.

Vikas Jain, Co-Founder, Micromax Informatics said, “At Micromax our emphasis is to drive innovations through software and services that would add a layer to the device eco-system. A large chunk of our efforts are now concentrated on coming up with products and services which act as solutions to the needs of the fast-evolving consumers, empowering them with the latest technological innovations and eventually becoming an extension of their lifestyle. Given the fact that, artificial intelligence is the future of device ecosystem, we look forward to seeing how the partnership with One Labs will enable us to enhance user experience even further”.

Rahul Gupta, the CEO and Co-founder, One Labs said, “We are proud to be working Micromax to bring over 100 million Micromax consumers closer to our compelling platform. While phone hardware is getting smarter and more efficient, we wanted to make apps smarter. Like Mobiles replaced pagers, we forsee that in a few years all in one apps like inOne will replace the need to download separate apps for different use cases.”

inOne – The All in One App Platform

The inOne platform currently hosts 50+ apps, combined in a neat package of under 10mb and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store. Some of the apps accessible on the inOne platform are Zomato, Ola, Uber, Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Housejoy, Nearbuy, Urban Clap, ixigo and BookMyShow. By virtue of combining apps, inOne enables price comparison across categories. For instance, Shoppr and TabShop @inOne compares prices across Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and Paytm. So whether it is buying a phone or camera or anything else -- the user gets the best price possible.

In addition, the low memory footprint of inOne drastically helps save space of upto 3GB and reduce background activity on your mobile device. This significantly improves the performance and battery life -- a core problem faced by all smartphone users.

Related Reading - Anatomy of Bots, Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

To recall, last July Freshworks (formerly Freshdesk) acquired a chatbot startup called Joe Hukum, which too was based out of Gurgaon. Later, in the same year, an another Gurgaon based AI chatbot startup iDelivr got acquired by Phonon Communications.

The year 2017 was dominated by various chatbot activities as Amazon launched chatbot tools for developers, to help them build chat features into their own app while Microsoft launched India-specific chatbot called Ruuh, which later got wind up by the company however.

According to a survey report by Oracle, it was revealed that about 80 per cent of the companies surveyed are interested in making use of chatbots within a period of next 4 years so as to take their customer service to another level.

Top-Most Image - L to R: Aashish Gupta, Ankit Sharma, Rahul Gupta (Co-Founders inOne), Vikas Jain (Co-Founder Micromax)

Conversational Bot Making Startup Anaek Raises Seed Funding Via Matrix Partners

Delhi-based SaaS startup Anaek, which develops chatbots, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Matrix Partners India, reported Live Mint.

The startup hasn't disclosed the amount of funding raised however a LiveMint report said the Anaek had raised roughly $1 million, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds to strengthen its technology and product platform, the company co-founder Kanav Abrol told the media.

The startup has a suite of conversational bots to help companies in HR and office tasks like attendance management, expense filing, and assists in office administration tasks, among others.

Founded in 2016 by Ex-PepperTap executives Kanav and Ujjwal Grover, Anaek currently has only 10 employees and a majority its clients are in the US while India is relatively a smaller market for the startup.

“Instant messaging has permeated workplace communication across markets, paving the way for seamless employee interactions. Anaek’s enterprise chatbots help employees complete routine business processes in a simple and efficient manner,” said Tarun Davda, MD, Matrix Partners India.

The chatbots have already started proving to be the player of a huge deal for India, where cheap devices are accelerating the annual growth in smartphone adoption to a massive 36 percent each year for the next five years.

Related Reading - Anatomy of Bots, Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

Increasing number of startups are trying to enter the conversational bot market with an aim of getting established in the bot commerce such as Indore-based Zipi and Niki.AI, which is backed by Ratan Tata, — are two major chatbot based startups from India.

Furthermore, according to a report published by Oracle, about 80% of the companies surveyed are interested in making use of chatbots within a period of next 4 years so as to take their customer service to another level.

Last August, Bengaluru-based Touchkin, which has built a mental health chatbot ‘WYSA’, had raised $1.3M in Seed Funding in a round led by Kae Capital.

To recall, in November Phonon Communication had acquired Gurgaon-based Chatbot startup iDelivr.

Conversational Bot Making Startup Anaek Raises Seed Funding Via Matrix Partners

Delhi-based SaaS startup Anaek, which develops chatbots, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Matrix Partners India, reported Live Mint.

The startup hasn't disclosed the amount of funding raised however a LiveMint report said the Anaek had raised roughly $1 million, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds to strengthen its technology and product platform, the company co-founder Kanav Abrol told the media.

The startup has a suite of conversational bots to help companies in HR and office tasks like attendance management, expense filing, and assists in office administration tasks, among others.

Founded in 2016 by Ex-PepperTap executives Kanav and Ujjwal Grover, Anaek currently has only 10 employees and a majority its clients are in the US while India is relatively a smaller market for the startup.

“Instant messaging has permeated workplace communication across markets, paving the way for seamless employee interactions. Anaek’s enterprise chatbots help employees complete routine business processes in a simple and efficient manner,” said Tarun Davda, MD, Matrix Partners India.

The chatbots have already started proving to be the player of a huge deal for India, where cheap devices are accelerating the annual growth in smartphone adoption to a massive 36 percent each year for the next five years.

Related Reading - Anatomy of Bots, Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

Increasing number of startups are trying to enter the conversational bot market with an aim of getting established in the bot commerce such as Indore-based Zipi and Niki.AI, which is backed by Ratan Tata, — are two major chatbot based startups from India.

Furthermore, according to a report published by Oracle, about 80% of the companies surveyed are interested in making use of chatbots within a period of next 4 years so as to take their customer service to another level.

Last August, Bengaluru-based Touchkin, which has built a mental health chatbot ‘WYSA’, had raised $1.3M in Seed Funding in a round led by Kae Capital.

To recall, in November Phonon Communication had acquired Gurgaon-based Chatbot startup iDelivr.

Phonon Communications Acquires iDelivr, A Gurgaon-based AI Chatbot Startup

Phonon Communications, a pioneer in automated customer interaction solutions, announced the acquisition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot company iDelivr. Gurgaon-based iDelivr was founded in 2015 by IIT/IIM alumni Vijayendra Singh and Kumar Gyanendra with a vision to develop game-changing AI-based bots that can revolutionize customer acquisition and servicing on digital channels by reducing acquisition costs and ensuring scalability.

iDelivr specializes in building AI-based industry specific chatbots aimed at providing human-like interactions for a superior customer experience. Powered by AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP), the chatbot can provide intelligent, seamless and human-like chat experience to users and help banking, financial, insurance and mutual fund companies achieve faster resolution of customer queries.

The company’s flagship product, ‘Loan Bot’ is a revenue-generating service which has achieved 2 lakh+ prospective loan interactions in a short period of time. It has an inbuilt loan eligibility calculator, answers FAQs on loan application processes and facilitates loan application. The service has helped banks increase leads received from static forms by 30% and has boosted application fill rate by more than 50%.

Post the acquisition, Vijayendra would be joining the Phonon team as Chief Operating Officer (COO) while Gyanendra will be the new Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

Speaking about the acquisition, Ujwal Makhija, CEO, Phonon Communications said, “Consumer preferences are shifting from traditional call center support towards newer support platforms which include web chat, Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter. iDelivr team’s deep expertise on AI and NLP as evidenced by Loan Bot being one of the few commercially successful bots in India will make us a truly multi-modal, speech and text-based, automation enterprise.”
Vijayendra Singh, co-founder, iDelivr added, “We are thrilled to incorporate our AI technologies into Phonon’s innovative products and services. Digital channels will redefine the future of communications and AI bots are a significant part of the change as they can help businesses increase efficiency and reduce costs.”

The banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sector has been the largest adopter of AI chatbot services. High demand by customers and a focus on reducing staffing costs has driven BFSI enterprises to implement AI chatbots. Vadodara-based Phonon has a strong presence in the BFSI sector with the segment accounting for nearly 60% of its topline. With ‘Loan Bot’, the company believes that it has made a strong addition to its suite of cutting-edge automation products for the BFSI sector.

Kannur-based Articbot is First Ever Virtual Assistant Chatbot That Understands 100+ Languages

Customers are at the heart of every business. Happy customers equals a successful business. This is what Kannur-based Articbot is helping businesses achieve. The startup provides enterprises with artificial deep learning virtual assistant chatbot.

The chatbot, which uses machine learning together with deep knowledge for smart and intelligent customer engagement, is a new and smart way to produce automated assistance to customers. It offers both conversational and text based self service experience.

According to the startup, Articbot is the first ever virtual assistant chatbot which can understand 100+ language for customer support. They also claim that one of the important competitive advantage that Articbot as a chatbot has over other chatbot's like Motion.ai etc. is that, Articbot comes with a pre trained industry knowledge and is the first chatbot in the market to even understand short and casual word responses from customers.

In order to ensure that the chatbot fits into the particular requirements of every business, the startup allows businesses to customise their articbot virtual agent. The customisation process is quite simple, too. One doesn’t require a super coding or machine learning experience to configure a virtual chatbot agent to one's own business, one just simply has to copy to the existing website code and start configuring from the articbot dashboard.

The chatbot has been designed and developed with its very own artificial semantic brain, which consists of several core section and libraries that analyse word by word in a customer query through deep semantic engine so any typing error or short words doesn’t make a difference. The startup has take into account most of the common questions that the customers usually ask and has trained it to treat a customer well, including a welcome message similar to the way a human agent will do.

[caption id="attachment_121362" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Founders - Articbot[/caption]

According to Rahul VP and Rijin Ramesh, the founders of Articbot, they decided to make an enterprise chatbot of their own when they found out that many companies face challenges when it comes to customer support. This particular thing not only seriously hampers their business' numbers, but it also tarnishes their reputation as customers are not satisfied when they do not get prompt support at their moment of need.

Though Rahul and Rijin started Articbot in January this year, they have known each other for last eight years. They both completed their BE from VMU salem in 2012 as classmates. After graduating, Rahul worked for a Bangalore based MNC, which he quite after sometime to join Rijin to work together in NIIT technologies.

The startup, which is currently unfunded, sells Articbot as a software as a service(Product) a web based product. It is available in subscription based varied form a free version to Premium version. According to statistics available from the startup, within just 1 full month operation, Articbot had managed to acquire 15 B2B customers, a figure it is planning to increase to 100 customers by year end.

Kannur-based Articbot is First Ever Virtual Assistant Chatbot That Understands 100+ Languages

Customers are at the heart of every business. Happy customers equals a successful business. This is what Kannur-based Articbot is helping businesses achieve. The startup provides enterprises with artificial deep learning virtual assistant chatbot.

The chatbot, which uses machine learning together with deep knowledge for smart and intelligent customer engagement, is a new and smart way to produce automated assistance to customers. It offers both conversational and text based self service experience.

According to the startup, Articbot is the first ever virtual assistant chatbot which can understand 100+ language for customer support. They also claim that one of the important competitive advantage that Articbot as a chatbot has over other chatbot's like Motion.ai etc. is that, Articbot comes with a pre trained industry knowledge and is the first chatbot in the market to even understand short and casual word responses from customers.

In order to ensure that the chatbot fits into the particular requirements of every business, the startup allows businesses to customise their articbot virtual agent. The customisation process is quite simple, too. One doesn’t require a super coding or machine learning experience to configure a virtual chatbot agent to one's own business, one just simply has to copy to the existing website code and start configuring from the articbot dashboard.

The chatbot has been designed and developed with its very own artificial semantic brain, which consists of several core section and libraries that analyse word by word in a customer query through deep semantic engine so any typing error or short words doesn’t make a difference. The startup has take into account most of the common questions that the customers usually ask and has trained it to treat a customer well, including a welcome message similar to the way a human agent will do.

[caption id="attachment_121362" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Founders - Articbot[/caption]

According to Rahul VP and Rijin Ramesh, the founders of Articbot, they decided to make an enterprise chatbot of their own when they found out that many companies face challenges when it comes to customer support. This particular thing not only seriously hampers their business' numbers, but it also tarnishes their reputation as customers are not satisfied when they do not get prompt support at their moment of need.

Though Rahul and Rijin started Articbot in January this year, they have known each other for last eight years. They both completed their BE from VMU salem in 2012 as classmates. After graduating, Rahul worked for a Bangalore based MNC, which he quite after sometime to join Rijin to work together in NIIT technologies.

The startup, which is currently unfunded, sells Articbot as a software as a service(Product) a web based product. It is available in subscription based varied form a free version to Premium version. According to statistics available from the startup, within just 1 full month operation, Articbot had managed to acquire 15 B2B customers, a figure it is planning to increase to 100 customers by year end.

AI Startup Talespin Expands Its Technology Offering, Launches Computer Vision As A Service

Artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning startup, Talespin has announced its foray into image tagging as a service, in addition to its chatbot. Talespin enables retail and online businesses with solutions to increase customer conversion. Its technology stack uses deep learning to classify and tag product images on different attributes like colour, collar, sleeves, occasion, etc. This coupled with the chatbot helps retail brands answer three core questions for customers shopping online - “What should I buy?”, “Is this available in my size?” and “Is there anything similar to this?”.

Founded by a team of 4 co-founders in July 2016, Talespin works as a plug and play solution for businesses enabling them to leverage advanced technologies to increase customer conversion - both in-store and online. It offers in-store tablet based assisted selling solutions to retail brands across various categories such as apparel, footwear, eyewear and beauty and wellness. It is now live in stores across Delhi/ NCR, Punjab and J&K.

Commenting on the recent development, Tapan Dixit, CEO and Co-founder, Talespin said, “Image recognition and classification which forms the crux of image tagging, is one of the simpler applications of computer vision. Computer vision is the science that aims to give capabilities similar to that of the human eye to a machine or computer. It helps computers develop a high-level understanding from digital images or even videos. Bring the two - (AI powered) chat and computer vision together, you get a chat with vision. One good example of its application is a frame finder solution for eyewear stores.”

How Does It Work?

Chat with vision can be used to build an in-store frame recommended AI which will help the store associate suggest the right kind of frames for his/her customers. With the Talespin’s in-store kiosk, a store associate at an eyewear brand captures a picture of the customers' face. Once the image is clicked it is run through a deep learning model to generate tags based on face structure and skin tone. The frame selection takes place using a digital inventory to support hard-to-fit and picky customers and prevents the loss of a sale. Basis the tags’ match, the system suggests the design type for the frame and products that fit the selection - all in a conversational format. All suggestions are based on the data in the inventory available. Once the customer selects a frame the payment can be received on the kiosk itself. Talespin also enables integration within a brand’s current loyalty program.

Talespin’s computer vision technology stack trains a series of deep learning models (one for each of a small group of attributes) and then creates a system for using those trained models to tag new images. The training process of the models can be a long task (measured in days) but once the models are trained and tuned, tagging a new image only takes seconds.

“The applications of computer vision are multiple. All current tasks performed by the human vision system can be taught to be executed by a machine algorithm. This coupled with a chat bot gives you an AI capable of processing information from images in real time and presenting it in a conversational format”, said Dixit.

The image tagging service can help brands cut down on costs that come with current manual processes of tagging as well as reduces room for error. With the right attributes available for every product, the discoverability factor goes up several notches. Talespin’s AI and deep learning technology stack at www.talespin.ai is now available to transform how brands interact with customers and vice versa.

SAP AI Focused Fund Made Its First India Investment in Niki.ai

German multinational software corporation SAP, which launched its $35-million artificial intelligence-focused fund SAP.iO in March, has made its first investment in India in Bangalore-based startup Niki.ai, according to a report by ET.

Exactly a year ago, Niki.ai had raised funds from Ratan Tata and Screwvala’s Unilazer while SAP.iO has made its first seed investment in Paradata, a Silicon Valley–based Big Data analytics startup.

The startup founded by four IIT Kharagpur alumni, has most recently raised funds in December last year, raised about Rs 3 crore from Haresh Chawla, partner at India Value Fund Advisors, with existing investor Ronnie Screwvala's Unilazer Ventures also participating in the round.

SAP will provide the startup with mentorship, customer introductions and access to platform integrations and APIs that will help Niki.ai deliver new and unique opportunities for customers.

SAP.iO plans to invest $10,000 to $250,000 in different companies, with a greater focus on driving SAP's engagement with startups.The fund made its first investment in Silicon Valley-based big data and analytics startup Paradata. It seeks to close 10-15 deals this year while next year it will aim for 20-25 deals.

Notably, SAP.iO fund is just one component of the SAP.iO open innovation model, which enables innovators both inside and outside SAP to use the power of SAP data, application programming interfaces (APIs) and platform technologies to unlock new value for customers.

Along with the fund, SAP.iO runs a foundry programme to incubate early-stage startups that build software applications, including those using frontier technologies such as machine learning and blockchain. At present SAP.iO foundries are located in San Francisco and Berlin.

Talking about Niki.ai, the startup has recently released its Chatbot SDK, which provides brands with a unique opportunity to enable conversational commerce on their platform through a simple integration, and make use of the advanced technology of language processing and machine learning built by the startup. The SDK acts as a plug and play technology that can be easily integrated in less than an hour of development effort.