Reliance Jio To Foray Into Conversational AI

Reliance Jio is reportedly acquiring Haptik – one of the world’s largest conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms for over Rs 200 crore. A recent media report claimed that the transaction is expected to be completed this week.  Citing a company document, the report claimed that “Reliance Jio Services Ltd and Haptik founders Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev have signed a Business Transfer Agreement.”

When contacted, Haptik declined to give an official response on the report. Jio was yet to comment on the development. Having grown 10 times in revenue in just one year, Haptik’s partners and clients include Coca-Cola, HDFC Life, Samsung, Edelweiss Tokio, Goibibo, Amazon Pay, ClubMahindra, ICICI Bank and Tata Docomo, among others.

Haptik was the first company to open source a conversation-based Entity Detection engine and is patent pending on a 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.

Sensing the immense opportunity ahead, nearly 200 AI start-ups in India are innovating and creating AI-based solutions for various industries. Chatbots are slowly becoming the default customer support solution for most services and Haptik is one such AI-based platform building applications for consumers, publishers and enterprises.