Airtel picks stake in conversational AI focused startup Voicezen

Bharti Airtel has acquired a 10 percent stake in Gurgaon-based conversational AI startup Voicezen in an all-cash transaction basis. The deal is expected to close by May 30.

The acquisition, which is the third so far, has been made by the company under its fast-expanding Airtel Startup Accelerator Program.

By becoming a part of this Program, Voicezen will get the opportunity to deploy its technologies on a massive scale and work closely with Airtel on developing India-first platforms of the future.

Airtel Startup Accelerator Program allows start-ups to leverage Airtel’s robust ecosystem, including its core strengths in data, distribution, networks, and payments. This includes access to a vast online and offline distribution network that touches 300m+ customers, deep market understanding and platform of global strategic partners. Further, start-ups also get access to advisory services from Airtel’s executive team.

Airtel believes that this acquisition is part of the company's strategy to deliver a highly differentiated service experience to its customers as Voicezen has been working on developing advanced solutions that leverage machine learning, AI, speech to text, and voice technologies to offer real-time analytics to help brands serve customers better.

In its broad term plan, Airtel wants to be a significant contributor to the global conversational AI market, which is expected to grow from $4.2 billion in 2019 to $15.7 billion by 2024. The megatrend will be driven by surging demand for AI-powered customer support services and omnichannel deployment. Increasing customer engagement through social media platforms and the integration of advanced AI capabilities will offer massive opportunities.

The investment will give Airtel preferred access to Voicezen’s technologies, which can be deployed across its customer touchpoints in multiple languages. These intelligent solutions will offer real-time analytics and insights to make Airtel’s conversations with its customers more engaging and frictionless and enable faster resolution. It will also allow Airtel to make contextual offers to customers based on real-time conversations.

Commenting on this acquisition, Adarsh Nair, Chief Product Officer - Bharti Airtel said, “AI is a big focus area for Airtel given the deep positive impact the technology can have in transforming the customer experience. Voicezen has built some promising products that are very relevant for a market like India. We are delighted to welcome them to the Airtel Startup Accelerator Program and look forward to partnering them in scaling these innovative ‘Made in India, for India’ applications and implement them in the real world.”

Apurba Nath, Founder - Voicezen added, “Voicezen helps brands deliver a better customer experience in Indian languages using Conversational AI. Having worked on AI solutions in the past, we knew what works well in a lab most often doesn't work in the real world, because either the training data is not large and relevant or the problem has little business significance. Our partnership with Airtel helps us solve these challenges. With this strategic investment, we will work even more closely with them to continuously improve our AI models and build out an enterprise-grade, battle-hardened product that will make customer interactions more efficient, especially in this post COVID world where business operations are facing large disruptions.”