Reliance Jio acquires AI firm Haptik for Rs 700 crore

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Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd on Wednesday announced that its subsidiary Reliance Jio Digital has entered into a definitive business transfer agreement with Mumbai-based Haptik Infotech Pvt Ltd. The transaction size, including investment for growth and expansion, is estimated at about Rs 700 crore, with Rs 230 crore as the consideration for the initial business transfer, the company said in a statement. Haptik is one of the world`s largest conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms. 

“This strategic investment underlines our commitment to further boost the digital ecosystem and provide Indian users conversational AI enabled devices with multi-lingual capabilities. We believe voice interactivity will be the primary mode of interaction for Digital India. We are delighted to announce this partnership, 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,” Akash Ambani, Director, Reliance Jio, said.

The Haptik team will continue to drive growth of the business including the enterprise platform as well as digital consumer assistants. On a fully diluted basis, Reliance will hold about 87 per cent of the business with the rest being held by Haptik founders and employees through stock option grants. 

This transaction enables Reliance Jio to leverage Haptik’s capabilities across various devices and touch points in the consumer’s journey. The investment focus is on enhancement and expansion of the platform, with an addressable market opportunity of over 1 billion users in India. 

On the investment, Aakrit Vaish, Co-Founder & CEO, Haptik said, “We started with the idea that conversational interfaces will cause a paradigm shift in the way people get things done. 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.".

"We truly believe now is the opportunity to serve the next billion users who come online, and who better to partner with than one of the world’s largest digital ecosystems in Jio. We look forward to using this strategic opportunity to exponentially scale up the business across various product lines,” he added. 

This partnership will also give a boost to Haptik’s existing enterprise-grade business, with the company continuing to build innovative AI solutions for corporates globally. 

Aakrit Vaish with Swapan Rajdev founded Haptik in 2013 as a chat-based virtual concierge mobile application.