EP30: Chatbots, 2 Billion Conversations & Reliance Industries {Aakrit of Haptik}

Stars & Startups

EP30: {Aakrit Vaish, Co-founder & CEO of Haptik}

We chat with Aakrit on the conversational AI space, his startup journey and the sale to Reliance Industries in April 2019, in a very candid conversation.

The conversational AI, chatbot space has seen a lot of action across the world after messaging services like the Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp have started enabling such interactions at scale. One of the leading players from India has been able to reach over 100 million devices, and process over 2 billion conversations.

More recently Haptik supported the Govt of India’s My Corona Helpdesk in the wake of the pandemic. They built and delivered it incredibly quickly and enabled it to scale to more than 76 million messages.

We also get chatting about Aakrit's journey from Flurry to being an angel investor. Aakrit is an investor in consumer focussed and SaaS Startups. Notable investments include Unacademy, Third Wave Coffee, Flatchat, Tookitaki, Dil Mil, iON Energy and a lot more.

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About Haptik:

Today, Haptik is one of the world's largest companies in the conversation AI space with more than 100 large enterprise clients including KFC, Samsung, Coca-Cola, OYO Rooms, Kotak Life and Dream11. In April 2019, Reliance Industries acquired majority shareholding in the company in a $100 million transaction.

Haptik is also #Hiring! Do check them out.

Stay Safe & do share the episode!

- V (@varunvummidi)

Timeline:

03:00 - Reliance JIO raising capital from global investors

04:45 - Becoming a part of Reliance - JIO Platforms Limited (JPL)

07:44 - Landing the MyGov Corona Helpdesk project

11:15 - Framework for choosing a strategic investor

14:33 - Creating a rapport with the promoter

16:51 - Govt's involvement in getting the chatbot right

19:20 - Evolution & the history of chatbots

25:20 - Returning to India and building a startup

26:36 - Venturing into Angel investing

30:15 - Struggles of Haptik & finding Product-Market-Timing fit

32:45 - Industries that are in a hype cycle

36:06 - Hiring at Haptik