Reliance Industries said it has agreed to acquire 87% of Mumbai-based artificial intelligence company Haptik Infotech for Rs 700 cr, including an initial payment of Rs 230 cr.
Reliance Industries said the technology will be used to bring artificial intelligence-based offerings on Reliance Jio, the telecom and digital arm of the group.
“This strategic investment underlines our commitment to further boost the digital ecosystem and provide Indian users conversational AI enabled devices with multi-lingual capabilities,” said Aakash Ambani, director of Reliance Jio.
He said his company believes that users will primarily use voice to interact with their devices, going forward.
“We believe voice interactivity will be the primary mode of interaction for Digital India…and look forward to working with the experienced team of Haptik in realizing this vision for offering greater connectivity and rich communication experiences to the billion+ Indian consumers.”
Aakrit Vaish, Co-Founder & CEO of Haptik said his company was founded on the belief that introduction of artificial intelligence-powered voice systems will cause a ‘paradigm shift’ in how people interact with devices.
“Over the course, we have built various products across both consumer and enterprise businesses, with the backbone always being a full stack chat and voice enabled AI technology platform,” he said, adding that the deal with Jio will help his company scale up the business.
The current team will continue to run the business, including the enterprise platform as well as digital consumer assistants. Haptik founders and employees will hold a stake of around 13% in the company after the completion of the acquisition.