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Addiction Jio, the telecommunications operator that revolutionized India with its generous data plans, is looking at the next generation of Internet users with its latest acquisition. The company announced today that it has acquired a majority stake in Haptik, a startup that is developing conversational platforms and virtual badistants, under a contract worth $ 100 million.
Jio will acquire 87% of the capital of the company, the remaining shares being left to Haptik. founding team and staff. The transaction includes 230 crores ($ 33 million) for the purchase of existing lenders and an investment of 470 crores ($ 67 million). Haptik, which was previously a chatbot platform, had raised just over $ 12 million from investors, including a 2016 B series worth $ 11 million from the investor in Times Internet media.
Haptik will continue to offer its business service – which helps companies develop and deploy voice and text platforms – but also help Jio to reach an ever larger audience of Indian consumers, said at TechCrunch the co-founder of Haptik, Aakrit Vaish interview.
"Going beyond [the current] In India, with 300 million Internet users, users may not necessarily use apps or devices in the same way as today, because especially the language barrier, "he explained. "Voice will be the cornerstone of how vernacular India will engage in many areas, whether it's applications, websites, phones and mobile phones." Other devices. "
Jio's aggressive data plan strategy, which started with free voice calls and free 4G data, disrupted India's telecommunications market and forced incumbents to act faster and reduce prices. Mobile data is now cheaper in India than anywhere else on the planet. This was, of course, a huge hit with consumers. The operator has always dominated the number of 4G subscribers and ranks third with more than 280 million customers, or about 23% of the market. Obviously, staying abad of next steps is an essential part of your plan to grow even further.
Vaish said Haptik was not under pressure to sell, but the team found an "ideal philosophy deal" with Jio, who is also exploring alternative solutions to allow consumers to interact with their devices and devices. services. The company has a "Hello Jio" badistant on its devices and Haptik could help it continue its strategy in the future, although Vaish said it was not defined yet.
Jio allows Haptik to continue working with its customers because at this point, enterprise services are "the only proven company" for conversation platforms, Vaish said. Nevertheless, he is keen that this agreement – which he describes more as a strategic partnership than an acquisition – will give Haptik the resources to grow while providing a level of autonomy within Reliance Jio.
This is the same anthem score as Akash Ambani, directly from Reliance Jio, who said in a statement that this deal would "energize" Jio's ecosystem and its multilingual services.
"We believe that voice interactivity will be the main mode of interaction for Digital India," he said. "We are excited to announce this partnership and look forward to working with Haptik's experienced team to realize this vision of providing increased connectivity and engaging communication experiences to billions of Indian users."
I'm not the only one looking for other chat interfaces. Flipkart, for its part, the voice recognition start-up acquired Liv.ai, last year, aims to reach new users of the Internet and the most comfortable with vernacular languages. Beyond large companies, vernacular applications such as ShareChat – which attracted Xiaomi's investment – and ByteDance's Velo in China – are seen as platforms that will have more and more influence as they grow. that Internet access will increase in India. In fact, it is feared that Chinese companies are already too dominant in the country.
Unlike your traditional telephone operator, Jio did not hesitate to make deals with technology companies and startups. To strengthen its "technology stack", it has acquired Saavn streaming service, which merged with its own offering, bought the AI Embibe platform, took a majority stake in infrastructure companies DEN and Hathway, invested in the KaiOS Android replacement solution and more.
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