Airtel Invests In Voicezen Under Airtel Startup Accelerator Programme

Telecom company Bharti Airtel under its Airtel Startup Accelerator programme has invested an undisclosed amount of funding in conversation AI-startup Voicezen for a 10% stake.

With this investment, Airtel will get access to Voicezen’s technologies to be deployed across its customer touchpoints in multiple languages. These intelligent solutions will offer real-time analytics and insights to make Airtel’s conversations with its customers more engaging,  frictionless and enable faster resolution.

It will also allow Airtel to make contextual offers to customers based on real-time conversations. Voicezen will be able to deploy its technologies on a massive scale and work closely with Airtel for the future.

Gurugram-based Voicezen was founded in 2018 by Apurba Nath. The company has been working on developing advanced solutions that leverage machine learning, AI, speech to text and voice technologies to offer real-time analytics to help brands serve customers better.

Apurba Nath, founder, Voicezen said that the company helps brands deliver a better customer experience in Indian languages using Conversational AI.

“With this strategic investment, we will work even more closely with them to continuously improve our AI models and build out an enterprise-grade, battle-hardened product that will make customer interactions more efficient, especially in this post Covid world where business operations are facing large disruptions,” he added.

Airtel launched its startup accelerator programme to support the growth of early-stage Indian tech startups. The company said that it aims to support the creation of a vibrant startup ecosystem that contributes to the government’s digital India initiative.

The startup accelerator programme will help early-stage startups to get access to Airtel’s online and offline distribution network, deep market understanding and ecosystem of global strategic partners.

Earlier, Bengaluru-based tech startup Vahan joined the programme and Airtel bought an 8.8% stake in the company. Airtel has been adopting applications and partner-based approach to boost its IoT business in India. The telecom company is also continuously investing in developing the narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) ecosystem.

Adarsh Nair, chief product officer – Bharti Airtel said, “AI is a big focus area for Airtel given the deep positive impact the technology can have in transforming the customer experience. Voicezen has built some promising products that are very relevant for a market like India.”

Haptik cofounder and CEO Aakrit Vaish has written that the conversational AI world has come a long way from being just a novelty item for businesses to being a feature with actual, substantial quantitative and qualitative advantages.

The global Conversational AI Market Size is expected to grow from $4.2 Bn in 2019 to $15.7 Bn by 2024. The megatrend will be driven by surging demand for AI-powered customer support services and omnichannel deployment, it said.