Reliance acquires Haptik conversational AI platform for Rs 700 crore

Reliance Industries subsidiary Jio has entered into a definitive business transfer agreement with Haptik chatbot maker to build its own conversational platform on the lines of Amazon's Alexa.

The transaction size including investment for growth and expansion is estimated at Rs 700 crore with Rs 230 crore as the consideration for initial business transfer.

Haptik lets users chat with their voice assistants to complete daily tasks such as online shopping, travel bookings, food delivery among others.

The Haptik team will continue to drive growth of the business, including the enterprise platform as well as digital consumer assistants. On a fully diluted basis Reliance will hold about 87 per cent of the business with the rest being held by Haptik founders and employees through stock option grants.

This transaction enables Reliance Jio to leverage Haptik's capabilities across various devices and touch points in the consumer's journey. The investment focus is on enhancement and expansion of the platform, with an addressable market opportunity of over 100 crore users in India.

This partnership will also give a boost to Haptik's existing enterprise grade business, with the company continuing to build innovative AI solutions for corporates globally.

"This strategic investment underlines our commitment to further boost the digital ecosystem and provide Indian users conversational AI enabled devices with multi-lingual capabilities," said Jio's Director Akash Ambani. "We believe voice interactivity will be the primary mode of interaction for Digital India," he said in a statement.

Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev founded Haptik in 2013 as a chat-based virtual concierge mobile application. Over the last two years, the focus has been on technology enhancement and enterprise grade solutions.

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