The word on the streets of India’s start-up world is that any mention of
artificial intelligence (AI) makes venture capitalists drool. From Sequoia
India to Tata Sons Ltd’s chairman emeritus Ratan Tata, reputed investors are
adding companies working on AI to their portfolio. This is only to be expected,
given that the entire tech world can’t stop talking about how AI, machine
learning and neural networks will completely change the world over the next few
decades. But it’s also a daunting task for Indian companies, given that all the
big global players are pouring massive resources into the space. There are
several Indian companies that have taken AI out of the lab and found real-world
applications for it.
The screen you can talk to
If you walk into the Nepean Sea
Road branch of RBL Bank Ltd (formerly Ratnakar Bank Ltd) in Mumbai next week
and swipe your card, you will see yourself on a large screen that will enable
various banking tasks, such as opening a new account or applying for a loan. You
can interact with the screen using gestures, swiping your hands right and left
to click on buttons and see further options, and you can also talk to the
screen.
As you view the options, the
screen will study your face, trying to gauge whether you’re engaged, interested
or bored. If it believes you’re interested in car loan options, it will suggest
schemes on these.
All this is powered by Fluid
AI, a Mumbai-based start-up founded three years ago by brothers Abhinav and
Raghav Aggarwal. Their gesture and speech recognition solution not only lets
companies provide customers with novel and intuitive experiences, it also
provides the enterprises with better data analytics.
As you interact with Fluid AI’s
solution on the screen, it studies you and your preferences. It then crunches
all this data and presents the enterprise with the analysis.
Apart from RBL Bank, Fluid AI
has also built a solution for Axis Bank, which it will launch sometime next month.
Auto companies such as Rolls-Royce, Hero and Toyota, as well as mobile service
provider Vodafone, are among its customers.
Fluid AI is also helping
enterprises use AI to make real-time decisions based on data. Their AI can
trade in the stock market, says Raghav. It learns when to buy and sell a stock
based on past data and can then make the actual decisions without human
intervention. Similarly, if a mobile phone company wants to know when its
customers are thinking of changing their service provider, Fluid AI can learn
customer behaviour by analysing data—dropped calls, complaints, poor network
areas etc.—and reach a decision on making a particular customer an offer or
escalating his complaint at the crucial moment.
Raghav
(left) and Abhinav Aggarwal of Fluid AI. photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint
The Chatbots
If you search for Niki Bot on
the Facebook Messenger app, you’ll be introduced to a virtual assistant that
can help you pay your electricity, phone or cable bills or book you a cab. Type
in “pay my phone bill” and it will ask for your number, service provider and
bill amount. Then, if you have a Paytm account, you can pay your bill right
there on Messenger, without being redirected to another app or site.
Niki Bot is the creation of
Niki.ai, an year-old Bengaluru-based start-up that has raised funding from,
among others, Ratan Tata and UTV group founder Ronnie Screwvala. Their aim is
to allow you to conduct various transactions online—paying bills, booking
transport, ordering food, getting chores done—on one platform, while talking to
a digital assistant.
Apart from their Facebook bot,
they also have their own app, Niki. On this, you can do everything you can on
the Facebook bot, plus book a bus, order a burger from Burger King and get your
laundry done. What makes the app “intelligent” is that it will attempt to have
a conversation with you, while an app like Zomato would make you go through
menus and select things yourself. If you want to order a burger on Niki, for
example, you can say “I like chicken”, and it will tell you it has a grill
chicken burger combo meal available. When it asks you when you want your
laundry picked up, you can say “First thing in the morning”, and it will
understand what you mean.
MagicX, a Bengaluru-based
start-up that raised funding this year from investors such as Kris
Gopalakrishnan, a co-founder and former chief executive officer of Infosys,
does almost exactly what Niki does. Its app and Facebook bot are both called
MagicX, and the app can communicate in English, Hindi and Kannada—eight more
languages are expected to be added soon. The company has the advantage of
having previously operated a chat application called Magic Tiger, which had
people answering requests over messaging, so it has gained some insight into
what customers want from a digital assistant.
Neither Niki.ai nor MagicX are
doing anything revolutionary. There are plenty of digital assistants powered by
AI being developed around the world, not the least Facebook’s own M, which lets
people in the US perform all sorts of tasks, from buying someone a birthday
gift to making dinner reservations. However, they can stay ahead of the
competition by quickly tying up with as many service providers as possible. So
if a company such as Facebook does want a digital assistant that could perform
tasks for people in India too, it would be easier for it to simply acquire or
ally with Niki or MagicX rather than approach every restaurant, airline and
mobile service provider for tie-ups.
The word on the streets of India’s start-up world is that any
mention of artificial intelligence (AI) makes venture capitalists drool. From
Sequoia India to Tata Sons Ltd’s chairman emeritus Ratan Tata, reputed
investors are adding companies working on AI to their portfolio. This is only
to be expected, given that the entire tech world can’t stop talking about how
AI, machine learning and neural networks will completely change the world over
the next few decades. But it’s also a daunting task for Indian companies, given
that all the big global players are pouring massive resources into the space.
There are several Indian companies that have taken AI out of the lab and found
real-world applications for it.
The screen you can talk to
If you walk into the Nepean Sea
Road branch of RBL Bank Ltd (formerly Ratnakar Bank Ltd) in Mumbai next week
and swipe your card, you will see yourself on a large screen that will enable
various banking tasks, such as opening a new account or applying for a loan.
You can interact with the screen using gestures, swiping your hands right and
left to click on buttons and see further options, and you can also talk to the
screen.
As you view the options, the
screen will study your face, trying to gauge whether you’re engaged, interested
or bored. If it believes you’re interested in car loan options, it will suggest
schemes on these.
All this is powered by Fluid
AI, a Mumbai-based start-up founded three years ago by brothers Abhinav and
Raghav Aggarwal. Their gesture and speech recognition solution not only lets
companies provide customers with novel and intuitive experiences, it also
provides the enterprises with better data analytics.
As you interact with Fluid AI’s
solution on the screen, it studies you and your preferences. It then crunches
all this data and presents the enterprise with the analysis.
Apart from RBL Bank, Fluid AI
has also built a solution for Axis Bank, which it will launch sometime next
month. Auto companies such as Rolls-Royce, Hero and Toyota, as well as mobile
service provider Vodafone, are among its customers.
Fluid AI is also helping
enterprises use AI to make real-time decisions based on data. Their AI can
trade in the stock market, says Raghav. It learns when to buy and sell a stock
based on past data and can then make the actual decisions without human
intervention. Similarly, if a mobile phone company wants to know when its
customers are thinking of changing their service provider, Fluid AI can learn
customer behaviour by analysing data—dropped calls, complaints, poor network
areas etc.—and reach a decision on making a particular customer an offer or
escalating his complaint at the crucial moment.
Raghav
(left) and Abhinav Aggarwal of Fluid AI. photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint
The Chatbots
If you search for Niki Bot on
the Facebook Messenger app, you’ll be introduced to a virtual assistant that
can help you pay your electricity, phone or cable bills or book you a cab. Type
in “pay my phone bill” and it will ask for your number, service provider and
bill amount. Then, if you have a Paytm account, you can pay your bill right
there on Messenger, without being redirected to another app or site.
Niki Bot is the creation of
Niki.ai, an year-old Bengaluru-based start-up that has raised funding from,
among others, Ratan Tata and UTV group founder Ronnie Screwvala. Their aim is
to allow you to conduct various transactions online—paying bills, booking
transport, ordering food, getting chores done—on one platform, while talking to
a digital assistant.
Apart from their Facebook bot,
they also have their own app, Niki. On this, you can do everything you can on
the Facebook bot, plus book a bus, order a burger from Burger King and get your
laundry done. What makes the app “intelligent” is that it will attempt to have
a conversation with you, while an app like Zomato would make you go through
menus and select things yourself. If you want to order a burger on Niki, for
example, you can say “I like chicken”, and it will tell you it has a grill
chicken burger combo meal available. When it asks you when you want your
laundry picked up, you can say “First thing in the morning”, and it will understand
what you mean.
MagicX, a Bengaluru-based
start-up that raised funding this year from investors such as Kris
Gopalakrishnan, a co-founder and former chief executive officer of Infosys,
does almost exactly what Niki does. Its app and Facebook bot are both called
MagicX, and the app can communicate in English, Hindi and Kannada—eight more
languages are expected to be added soon. The company has the advantage of
having previously operated a chat application called Magic Tiger, which had
people answering requests over messaging, so it has gained some insight into
what customers want from a digital assistant.
Neither Niki.ai nor MagicX are
doing anything revolutionary. There are plenty of digital assistants powered by
AI being developed around the world, not the least Facebook’s own M, which lets
people in the US perform all sorts of tasks, from buying someone a birthday
gift to making dinner reservations. However, they can stay ahead of the
competition by quickly tying up with as many service providers as possible. So
if a company such as Facebook does want a digital assistant that could perform
tasks for people in India too, it would be easier for it to simply acquire or
ally with Niki or MagicX rather than approach every restaurant, airline and
mobile service provider for tie-ups.
The
Niki.ai app in action.
The E-commerce enablers
Right now, e-commerce offers
convenience and lower prices than physical stores. But the next step is to completely
revolutionize shopping by providing truly personalized experiences. What online
shopping sites and apps mainly rely on now are tags keyed in by people. If you
search for a sari that an app has tagged as Banarasi, you will see ads for
Banarasi saris the next time you open it. But the app is not truly learning
your taste in clothes.
This is where Mad Street Den
comes in. A two-year-old Chennai-based company, Mad
Street Den is specifically targeting online fashion retailers and, through its tool Vue.ai, helps them learn more
about their customers and make the experience of shopping more intuitive. Using
Mad Street Den’s services, retailers can also allow people to search for
garments through images rather than text.
So, rather than typing in “green
sari with sequins suitable for casual and formal functions”, you can just take
a photo of a sari that fits that description, and the online shopping app,
using Mad Street Den’s AI, will show you similar saris. All the while, the app
is learning about your specific tastes and will suggest products based on its
assessment.
Mad Street Den counts online
fashion retailers Craftsvilla and Voonik among its clients. Slightly worryingly
for the company, though, Flipkart recently discontinued its image search feature,
which was powered by Singapore-based ViSenze, citing minimal usage.
Mumbai-based Arya.ai is also
hoping to enable companies to use AI, but rather than building tools for them,
it has built a programming tool called Braid, released earlier this month, that
other companies can use to build neural networks. Companies can then use those
neural networks to do everything from automatizing their processes to learning
how to recognize photographs.
For companies such as Mad
Street Den and Arya.ai, the competition will be stiff, as some of the biggest
tech companies in the world are researching image recognition and analytics. A
recent Evans Data Corp. report says that about 60% of software developers in
India have been experimenting with AI and machine learning. So we can expect
plenty of competition in the space in the next few years.
Jason Fernandes, founder of
tech start-up SmartKlock, contributed to this story.
hemen
parekh
Marol
, Mumbai , India
( M
) +91 - 98,67,55,08,08
