SoftBank-Backed Automation Anywhere Acquires French Automation Startup Klevops

SoftBank-backed robotic process automation company, Automation Anywhere, has announced the acquisition of Paris-based Klevops for an undisclosed amount.

Post-acquisition, Automation Anywhere fast forwards the RPA category to Attended Automation 2.0, where managers can easily orchestrate workflows across a team of employees and bots. This enables customers to automate more processes with the same level of central governance, security and analytic capability.

Automation Anywhere was founded in 2003 by Ankur Kothari, Mihir Shukla, Neeti Mehta, and Rushabh Parmani, all of Indian origin. The company enables  automation of business processes and is present globally with operations in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Vadodara in India.

Till date, the company has raised over $500 Mn, with $300 Mn coming in its last round through a SoftBank Vision Fund investment. Automation Anywhere provides a complete suite of AI-driven products capable of automating business processes at scale. This includes a foundational Enterprise RPA platform; IQ Bot, an artificial intelligence (AI) product and Bot Insight, a predictive analytics solution embedded in bots.

More than 2,800 customer entities and 1,600 enterprise brands use AA’s AI-enabled solution to manage and scale business processes faster, with near-zero error rates, while dramatically reducing operational costs.

Prince Kohli, chief technology officer, Automation Anywhere said, “The acquired technology from Klevops will alter the dynamics between attended and unattended automation making it a foundational solution for companies scaling their automation initiatives across all industries. This is especially relevant to contact center-intensive industries like banking, financial services and telecommunications.”

Through the Klevops’ acquisition, Attended Automation 2.0 enables several employees to orchestrate attended automation tasks across multiple groups of employees and multiple bots.

“Klevops shares a similar mission to create business value through human-to-bot collaboration improving how we solve customer service challenges,” said Nicolas Piau, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder, Klevops. He added that the company believes that this acquisition will allow it to address the inevitable demand for attended automation and the ability to automate a broader range of tasks.

Automation Anywhere competes with global players such as New York-based UiPath, San Francisco-based enterprise AI startup Infrrd and more. UiPath had also raised $225 Mn in a Series C funding round, co-led by existing investor CapitalG and new investor Sequoia Capital along with existing investor Accel Partners.

The global Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market size was valued at $357.5 Mn in 2017 and is expected to register at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate of 31.1% over 2018-2025, according to a market research report.