Ratan Tata invests in chatbot

Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, has invested an undisclosed amount in niki.ai, an artificial intelligence-based chatbot, a company founded by four IIT-Kharagpur alumni.

It was founded in April 2015 by IIT-Kharagpur alumni Sachin Jaiswal, Keshav Prawasi, Nitin Babel and Shishir Modi and has now grown to a 21-member team.

"niki.ai, an artificial intelligence (AI) based chatbot, announced that Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, has invested in the company along with Ronnie Screwvala's Unilazer that did a follow-up round to their first seed investment," IIT-Kgp said in a statement on Saturday.

niki.ai leverages the technology of natural language processing and machine learning to converse with the customers over a simple chat interface, and places their orders within seconds with the partner businesses, the statement said.

Currently, Niki chatbot offers bill payments, cab booking, recharge, food ordering, home services, cricket scores, with many more applications in the pipeline, the statement said.