Reliance Jio is reportedly acquiring Haptik – one of the world’s largest interactive Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms for over 200 crores. Quoting a company’s document, the media report claims that “Reliance Jio Services Limited and the founder of Haptik Akash Vaish and Swapan Rajdev have signed a Business Transfer Agreement”.
Jio has not yet given any official statement on this deal. After just one year their revenue expanded 10 times. Haptik partners and clients include Coca-Cola, HDFC Life, Samsung, Edelweiss, Goibibo, Amazon Pay, club Mahindra, ICICI Bank, and Tata Docomo. Haptik was the first company to open a conversation-based entity detection engine on the source, and their unique AI-Bot has a patent pending for the agent’s routing capabilities.
In view of the huge opportunity ahead, around 200 AI based start-ups in India are now innovating and manufacturing solutions for different industries. Chatbots are gradually becoming the default customer support solution for most services, and Haptik-based Mumbai is an AI-based platform that creates applications for consumers, publishers, and enterprises. A software-A-service (SaaS) HR Technology and Solutions Company PeopleStrong said that by 2020, more than 50 percent of Indian retail companies will work on AI.
Earlier this month, the Maharashtra government partnered with Haptik to develop a chatbot for the purpose of disseminating effective information to the citizens. Founded by Vaish and Rajdev, both University of Illinois engineering alumni, in August 2013, 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.
With the huge spread of AI machines like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant will be in a strong position to challenge the Indian market, which is developing rapidly through devices connected with Smart Home Speakers and other Internet of Things (IOTs). In relation to Reliance Jio, it is being told that Jio is going to buy Mumbai-based Haptic for the largest artificial intelligence (AI) forums in the world for Rs.200 crores. When contacted, Haptik refused to give official feedback on the report. At the same time, the Reliance Jio spokesman said that the company does not comment on the speculation of the market. Industry sources, however, said that the agreement has not been completed yet.
