AI-led automation set to fuel yellow.ai expansion globally

Dubai - The customer experience automation platform has raised more than $102 million so far to invest more in its AI programme to expand its footprint worldwide.

The fast growing startup yellow.ai sees bright scope for AI-led automation worldwide and banking on its strategy to built its product, partnerships, teams, and community to truly democratise Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the near future, its top official says.

The customer experience automation platform, which provides valuable solutions to 700+ enterprises globally, has raised more than $102 million so far to invest more in its AI programne to expand its footprint worldwide.

“Our growth is driven by continuous product innovation, latest implementations such as deepening multilingual voice bot capabilities, expanding enterprise integrations, and launching a developer marketplace for virtual assistants. We have been expanding our footprint across the US, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions,” Raghu Ravinutala, chief executive and co-founder of yellow.ai, told Khaleej Times during an interview.

Conversational AI platforms

Yellow.ai enables enterprises to leverage its proprietary NLP engine and platform to build chatbots and voice bots, in 100+ languages, across 35+ channels that automate functions like customer support, customer engagement, conversational commerce, and employee experience. The startup recently raised $78.15 million in Series C funding to invest more in AI-led solutions to sustain strong business growth recorded since inception in 2015.

“We are helping enterprises automate core business processes across messaging, voice and browser interfaces to be relevant, and achieve higher efficiency and savings, using conversational AI. We have created a SaaS architecture for conversational AI platforms, with a solid orchestration layer to solve complex business problems, easily scalable to new clients across geographies, and newer geographies within existing accounts,” said Ravinutala.

“We have 500+ employees at yellow.ai, with a strong presence in India and Asia and Pacific region. The bulk of our hiring will continue to happen in the US and across the world, as we expand,” he said.

For the industries like retail, banking and finance bringing out the technological big guns can help them provide exceptional customer experience to secure happy and loyal customers,” he added.

“With the fresh infusion of capital, yellow.ai will deepen investments in global expansion, hiring top talent across regions, and applied research and development in hyper-automation,” he said.

Learning customer behaviour

Currently, Ravinutala said the company’s AI-powered bots deliver automated CX on 35+ chat and voice channels, across 100+ languages, handling billions of interactions every quarter.

“Our virtual assistants have been credited with learning customer behaviour so precisely that one international financial services company was able to leverage virtual assistants powered by yellow.ai to generate $100 million in upsell revenue in just three years,” said Ravinutala.

“With the aim of solving the challenge of ROI-generating conversational AI execution at scale, we launched our R&D arm, Bitonic Labs India, which is focused on solving futuristic business challenges with the prowess of AI, machine learning and Neuro-linguistic programming. We will continue to invest in product innovation, build on implementations such as multilingual voice bot capabilities, expand enterprise integrations, and launch a developer marketplace for chatbot skills,” he added.

Core markets

Sharing details about core markets of his startup, Ravinutala said yellow.ai core enjoys a dominant position in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa region.

“In the Middle East, we have our key clients in GCC countries along with Egypt and North Africa. We are aggressively working capitalising opportunities in the region,” he said.

Further, he said the startup is working on establishing a strong presence in the US with the fresh infusion of funds.

“In essence our platform is supporting enterprise automation needs in Japan to Indonesia to China to Mexico to Trinidad and Tabago to UAE. What we’re building under the umbrella of conversational AI platforms is truly differentiated with the automation-first and human-in-the-loop model, driving efficiency across industries and business functions.

“Currently, yellow.ai is helping 700+ companies across the world in 50+ countries to drive Total CX Automation,” he said.

Post- pandemic growth strategy

Ravinutala said the Covid-19 pandemic brought unprecedented times for every organisation, and no one was ready for a lockdown and elongated work from home scenarios. Enterprises had to quickly adapt to ensure business continuity while minimising redundancy across geographies, establishments, and teams, he said.

“Yellow.ai swiftly scaled to meet global demand for digital transformation. Today, we are trusted by 700+ clients to drive business continuity in 50+ countries, and are capable of handling 100+ languages, across 35+ channels for text and voice automation.

“We have been steadily focusing on broad international expansion and have grown to 4X of our previous year’s revenue, where 40 per cent of our revenue comes from global clients and 60 per cent from India,” he said.

Ravinutala said conversational AI platforms are a part of the core digital transformation tech suite and have witnessed a sharp rise in demand and adoption post- pandemic. “At yellow.ai, we scaled rapidly and went from 200+ clients in Jan 2020 to 700+ clients today to cater to this demand,” he said.

— muzaffarrizvi@khaleejtimes.com