Reliance Jio-owned Haptik acquires conversational commerce platform Buzzo.ai

Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot firm Haptik, a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd, on Tuesday said it has acquired a Mumbai-based conversational commerce start-up Buzzo.ai. The deal was valued at $3-4 million (around between Rs 21.25 crore to Rs 28.33 crore at current exchange rates), Mint reported.

Founded in 2016 by entrepreneurs Anand Ramachandran and Vivek Arya, Buzzo.ai is a platform to create an expert advisor-like conversational shopping experience in retail or e-commerce.

Following this acquisition, Haptik will now be able to further enhance voice and chat commerce solutions for its customers globally, and leverage the platform to power multilingual experiences, the company said in a statement.

This is the second acquisition by Reliance Jio-owned Haptik in the last three months. Earlier in July, Mumbai-based Haptik acqui-hired Convrg, a Los Angeles-based startup that develops chatbots, to serve customers in North America.

Swapan Rajdev, co-founder & CTO of Haptik, said the company had been primarily focussing on customer service AI solutions over the last 18 months.

Also Read: Reliance Jio acquires AI-firm Haptik for Rs 700 crore

In April this year, Reliance Industries, through its subsidiary Reliance Jio Digital Services, had acquired 87 per cent stake in Haptik for Rs 700 crore, with Rs 230 crore as the consideration for the initial business transfer. The deal will give an exit to majority stakeholder Times Internet, which has invested in Haptik in 2016.

Founded in 2013, Haptik is one of the world's largest conversational AI platforms and focuses on key customer engagement use cases such as customer support, concierge, lead generation and live chat. It has processed more than 2 billion interactions till date, with a marquee client list that includes Samsung, Coca-Cola, Future Retail, KFC, Tata Group, Oyo Rooms, Mahindra Group, among others.

Edited by Chitranjan Kumar