Technology
Niki- AI Chat Bot to Simplify Your Order Experience
rtificial Intelligence has been a
Arage, owing to its utility and advantages. Globally renowned companies have been incorporating AI into their systems, and aiming to tap newer audiences and attract more business. The hottest segment of this current trend is the market for conversational bots. From a customer point of view, it becomes really convenient to interact naturally with a bot, who can then get the work done for you in a smart way.
Keeping this in mind, the founding team at Niki. ai started working on a conversational agent named Niki who can help users shop. They firmly believe that adoption to a new and innovative technology comes when there is a significant utility of the product. Hence they decided to combine the potential of AI and conversations, with the utility of commerce.
Niki. ai was founded by four IIT Kharagpur alumni – Sachin Jaiswal, Nitin Babel, Shishir Modi and Keshav Prawasi. Keshav comes with a Computer Science background and has worked with Amazon for 4 years building architectures at scale. Shishir was the head of Strategic Initiatives at Indiareads, and Nitin has worked with Ipsos doing Marketing Analytics for Fortune 500 firms, before co-founding niki. ai. Sachin co-founded data analytics company Innovacer before Niki. ai which was preceded with a job at Oracle as a product manager.
Started in May 2015, Niki envisions to become one shop for everything commerce. Niki is an AI bot who converses to help you shop for 20 + products and services and makes the whole journey from discovery to transaction fast, convenient and extremely simple. The services range from travel services like Hotel, Cab and Bus Booking, to Utility Bill Payments, to entertainment services like movie and events booking.
The team has always believed that artificial intelligence has the potential to redefine m-commerce globally, and they stuck to their mission in the initial stages. The founders put all their focus on building a value-providing product first, before they start to worry about funding. Once they had something to show for as a beta, they got good feedback from users and mentors alike. The company then raised seed round from Unilazer Ventures in October 2015. Post which there was a follow up round in May 2016 by their existing investors Unilazer Ventures and Mr. Ratan Tata. The company feels proud that Mr. Tata backs their vision. The team is motivated to learn from his vast experience and knowledge about the industry and business.