Tech startup set for expansion spree in Mideast, India

Automation Anywhere, a global leader in robotic process automation, which made a foray into the Middle East with the opening of its regional headquarters in Dubai last month, is pressing ahead with an expansion spree in the India, Middle East and Africa region, seeking a bigger slice of the potential $50 billion RPA and Artificial Intelligence market opportunity globally.
An immediate top priority for the Softbank-backed AI and robotics start-up firm based in San Jose, California, is the opening of an office in Saudi Arabia. In India, the tech firm, which also has Goldman Sachs as an investor, will open four new offices to support "an unprecedented surge in customers and partners," said Mihir Shukla, CEO and co-founder of the firm.
The company also plans to deploy more than one million software bots across IMEA by 2020.
RPA is a technology that helps organisations improve business productivity and increases the number of tasks that can be automated, particularly in banking, financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing and retail, said Shukla.
Gartner recently reported that robotic process automation (RPA) software revenue grew 63.1 per cent in 2018 to $846 million, making it the fastest-growing segment of the global enterprise software market. Gartner analysts also expect RPA software revenue to reach $1.3 billion this year alone and hit $4 billion in 2025. However, total Addressable RPA market is worth $50 billion, according to management consulting company Zinnov, but enterprises are expected to spend just $2.1 billion in 2019.
The Zinnov report also predicts rapid growth, with RPA spend increasing by 37 per cent a year, hitting $11 billion by 2024 and said that the worldwide talent pool has increased to 210,000.
The company, which produces software powered 'digital workers' that are three times as productive as human employees, also plans to double its workforce across IMEA by the end of the current year, said Shukla, addressing a press briefing at the company's office in Bengaluru. In the Middle East, it will have over 100 employees by June 2020, up from 20 at present.
Milan Sheth, executive vice president for India, the Middle East and Africa of Automation Anywhere, said it is in talks with a number of UAE-based airlines and telecom operators to provide software to boost productivity by undertaking mundane day-to-day tasks. The firm now has 50 customers in the region, including Emirates NBD, Network International and Dubai Asset Management. The company is currently in discussion with several airlines and government entities in the UAE to set up innovation centres and labs.
The firm's expansion plan is a result of the increased adoption of RPA. As part of its expansion strategy, Automation Anywhere will strengthen its presence in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Vadodara as well as open new offices in Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune. Currently, the company has three engineering centres in India - two in Bangalore and one in Baroda.
It also plans to open a new product engineering centre in Pune by the end of the year to expand research and development capabilities. "As organisations seek to lower operating costs and improve employee productivity with RPA, India possesses a tremendous business opportunity for our company," said Ankur Kothari, Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder of Automation Anywhere. "We are building the world's most efficient and intuitive end-to-end intelligent RPA platform, and over the next year, we anticipate deploying more than one million bots across India and Middle east to help more companies discover, deploy and scale RPA to drive extraordinary human potential."
India, the Middle East and Africa remain one of the fastest growing regions for Automation Anywhere. In IMEA, the company has experienced a growth rate of approximately 200 per cent year-over-year with now more than 3,100 global enterprise brands using its RPA platform.
"This growth reinforces the company's position as one of the industry's most widely deployed, enterprise-grade intelligent RPA platforms. With modern enterprises drowning in legacy systems, overloaded with data, and struggling with too many manual processes, RPA has emerged as a business-critical tool for enterprises across multiple segments. Business and technology decision makers heavily depend on AI driven RPA technology to augment their processes and thus enable efficient business models that allows enterprises to scale at a much faster pace, said Sheth.
The firm's global customer roster now includes 90 per cent of the world's top healthcare companies, 85 per cent of the world's top technology companies, more than 85 per cent of the world's top banks and financial services companies, and 80 per cent of the world's top telecommunications companies. In addition to expanding its presence in the region, Automation Anywhere has also increased its workforce to more than double in India in 2018 and built a global presence in more than 41 offices worldwide. It plans to open new offices in Brazil, Hong Kong, France, Mexico, the Middle East and South Africa.
Ranked among the leading global RPA players, the company counts among its achievement the launch of the Bot Store, the industry's first online marketplace for preconfigured downloadable RPA bots - now with more than 550 different software bots. - issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com