Formerly called zabbed Number of locations 1 (2016) | Headquarters Bangalore, India Area served India | |
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Founded 1 March 2015; 2 years ago (2015-03-01)
Udaipur, India Founder Sachin Jaiswal
Shishir Modi
Keshav Prawasi
Nitin Babel | ||
Niki ai tech30 techsparks2015
Niki is an Indian online electronic commerce company headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. It was founded in May 2015 by 4 IIT Kharagpur graduates - Sachin Jaiswal, Keshav Prawasi, Shishir Modi and Nitin Babel.
Contents
- Niki ai tech30 techsparks2015
- Product
- Core functionality
- Recharge
- Cab booking
- Bill payments
- Press
- References
The Niki android app was launched for a limited beta in June, 2015 and then released for public during YourStory's TechSparks 2015, and is a Tech30 company. The company has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Unilazer Ventures, a Mumbai-based VC firm founded by Ronnie Screwvala, in October 2015. This was followed by another seed funding round by Ratan Tata in May 2016.
Product
The product is an Artificial Intelligent powered chatbot which works as an intelligent personal assistant, named Niki. Leveraging on Natural Language processing and Machine Learning, Niki presents a chat based Natural Language User Interface to the users where they can interact with Niki in their natural language. Niki understands how users chat in India, and decipher the words, in the context of product/services that they would like to purchase, and comes up with the apt recommendations for the same.
Initially it was only available on the Android platform as a mobile app, but now the company has expanded its operations to the Facebook messenger platform and have introduced a better user experience and Natural Language Processing Tech. In the near future the company aims to be present on iOS as well as more messaging platforms like Slack and WhatsApp. The company currently provides 10+ services to over 100k consumers, covering a wide spectrum ranging from utility services like mobile recharge and all bill payments and travel services like cabs, buses, hotels to entertainment services like events. There are many more services in the pipeline, such as flights, movies and healthcare in the next 3 months.
Core functionality
Niki performs ordering tasks via chat such as Recharge, Cab booking and bill payments. Users can chat with Niki just as they would chat with a human, but the chat has to be related to the product/service that’s being ordering. Niki has three major services currently.
Recharge
Users can ask for the best recharge plans as per his requirements such as talk-time, validity or data size. Niki, then comes up with the apt recommendations that suit the set criteria. Users can choose one of the provided options and make payment in-chat with Paytm wallet or online payment. In-chat payment in Niki is powered by Paytm integration wherein an OTP generated by Paytm is fetched to Niki to debit the user’s wallet and confirm the transaction.
Cab booking
niki.ai has partnered with Ola & Uber to offer their cab services in chat through Niki. Users can now look up for all the Ola & Uber services in one app and pick the nearest or the cheapest cab or go with their preferred cab anytime. Also, cab booking now happens on 2G.
Bill payments
Niki helps users pay their postpaid, water, electricity & DTH bills, insurance premiums with their Paytm wallet in chat. Users have to enter their billing details for the first time and then, put up the bill amount and proceed with payment. Billing details were saved with Niki for the future transactions and customers then, have to just enter the bill amount & complete the payment.
Press
Niki was featured in The Economic Times, Tech in Asia, Business Standard and other magazines. Niki was lauded as the new innovation in the Artificial Intelligence space and one of the very few startups in India to take it up on Machine Learning to develop a chatbot for ordering.