Personal assistance app Haptik gets Silicon Valley veteran on board

Ram Gupta has an industry experience of more than 25 years and he served on various public and private company boards, including Nasdaq-listed companies

Silicon Valley veteran Ram Gupta joined the board of personal chat assistant app Haptik on Wednesday, the company said.

A software executive at the Silicon Valley, Gupta comes with an industry experience of more than 25 years and serves on various public and private company boards including Nasdaq-listed Progress Software, Simplilearn, Aryaka Networks, FusionOps, Unmetric Inc and Lybrate.

He has been part of teams that built the maiden health care internet transaction service, the initial pure internet application software and the first application consolidation in the cloud, a company statement said. Before becoming a seasoned investor and advisor, he served as the President and CEO of Cast Iron Systems.

“Over the last few years, there have been hundreds of quality startups and entrepreneurs emerging from India. A lot of startups in India are trying to use the labor arbitrage to provide a service. But for a company to be real on the global stage, it has to create technology differentiation. Some of the companies in the same space as Haptik are trying to solve the problem with an army of people. Haptik, on the other hand has taken the right approach by innovating using machine learning algorithms that creates sustainable differentiation. Those are things that really get me excited,” said Gupta.

Aakrit Vaish, CEO & Co-founder, Haptik, said, “Given he usually engages with more mature companies than what Haptik is today, we are very fortunate to have him engage with us and he will be helping on all aspects of the business including strategy, marketing, team development, fundraising, etc. The best part about him is that he is very accessible - he is a friend to the company and founders and available whenever you need him for whatever reason.”

Mumbai-based Haptik was launched in 2014 and has grown 40 per cent month-on-month in a year. With the personal assistant chat service, users can get answers to any enterprise-based queries, without going through the gruesome call centre waiting and automated assistance system. Currently, it processes more than 20,000 chats per day.

The company will soon launch a refreshed version of the app. “We are excited about launching a completely redesigned version of the app this week, and then from then on get to more than 100,000 chats per day by the end of the year. We have already started monetising as well, and the numbers are looking very exciting, so will increase focus on becoming a sustainable revenue generating company by 2016,” said Vaish.