NASDAQ-Listed Coinbase Marks First Acquisition In India With Agara

NASDAQ-listed crypto exchange platform Coinbase has marked its first acquisition in India by buying Agara, an artificial intelligence-powered support platform. 

The acquisition will help Coinbase, which enjoys a hefty customer base in the western world more precisely in the US, consolidate its presence in India, which is seeing a surge in the crypto purchase.

In a blog post, Abhimanyu, who is the CEO and cofounder of Agara said that post-acquisition Agara will continue to deliver customer support to “rapidly increasing base of Coinbase customers across the world”. 

It is worth noting that Coinbase has started hiring in India since the beginning of the year. In a blog post dated March 24, the company had announced that it wants to establish a business presence in India. 

“We plan to leverage Agara’s powerful Deep Learning and Conversational AI technology to automate and enhance our customer experience (CX) tools. Improving our CX remains a top priority for Coinbase — in the past few months we have increased our support staff headcount by 5x and announced that we’ll deliver 24/7 phone support and live messaging by end of year. Through this acquisition, we’ll be able to provide our customers with new personalized, intelligent, and real-time support options,” said Manish Gupta, EVP, Engineering of Coinbase.

According to TechCrunch, Coinbase is likely to buyout Agara for around $40 Mn.

Founded by Arjun Maheswaran and Abhimanyu in 2017, Agara develops virtual voice agents that leverage proprietary machine learning models to understand intentions in speech, make intelligent decisions to handle queries and talk individual customers through to a resolution. 

The startup in February raised $4.3 Mn in its Pre-Series A round led by Japan-based early-stage deeptech investor UTEC. The round also saw participation from Blume Ventures and RTP Global, the company’s existing investors. The company also counts Kleiner Perkins among its investors.

Agara claims that its platform can be integrated with Twilio, Shopify, Genesys, Salesforce, among others and have partnered with brands such as Tide, Gillette, Pampers, Olay, Tampax, among others. Agara has held over 3.1 Mn conversations for more than 200 brands. 

Agara competes with similar voice-based AI startups such as Observe.AI, Niki, Slang Labs among others.

The developments come a few days after Coinbase along with a16z backed Indian crypto startup CoinSwitch Kuber in its $260 Mn round. Coinbase Ventures has recently also invested in Stader Labs, a cryptocurrency staking management platform.