Haptik Inc., an artificial intelligence-based conversational platform controlled by Reliance Industries Ltd, has acquired Buzzo.ai, a Mumbai-based conversational commerce platform, according to media reports.
The deal was valued at $3-4 million (approximately between Rs 21.25 crore to Rs 28.33 crore at current exchange rates), Mint reported. Neither Haptik nor Buzzo have disclosed the financial details of the transaction.
Swapan Rajdev, co-founder at Haptik, said the acquisition will enhance the firm’s voice and chat solutions and leverage the platform to enable multilingual experiences
VCCircle has reached out to Haptik and Buzzo.ai on the details of the acquisition and will update this report accordingly.
Separately, Buzzo.ai co-founder Anand Ramachandran said the startup has been working in the areas of natural language procession (NLP), text processing, semantic search and information retrieval.
Buzzo, which was founded in 2016 by Anand Ramachandran and Vivek Arya, says its mission is to be the go-to platform for businesses to be able to deploy and tweak brand-specific intelligent systems, according to its website.
Haptik
This is the second reported acquisition by RIL-controlled Haptik in the last two months. In July, it acqui-hired Los Angeles-based conversational AI startup Convrg Technologies Inc. to expand its business in North America.
At the time, Haptik co-founder and chief executive officer Aakrit Vaish said the company had realised the need for a dedicated full-time operations in the US.
That development came barely months after Reliance, through wholly owned unit Reliance Jio Digital Services Ltd, acquired an 87% stake in Haptik for a total of $100 million. At the time, Reliance said it would pay Rs 230 crore ($30 million) for the initial business transfer from Haptik to wholly owned unit Reliance Jio Digital Services Ltd.
Haptik, which was co-founded in 2013 by Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev, offers and AI-based chatbot that helps consumers interact with organisations via text and voice. For these organisations, it offers solutions that help in customer service, customer feedback, user engagement and lead generation.
Its clients include companies such as Samsung, KFC, Amazon Web Services and ICICI Bank. In 2016, Haptik raised an undisclosed amount from Times Internet in its Series B funding round. The firm also formed a partnership with the Times Group.
