Avaamo was founded in 2014 by Sriram Chakravarthy and Ram Menon. The startup is a deep-learning software company that specialises in conversational interfaces to solve specific problems in the enterprise. “Avaamo is building fundamental AI technology across a broad area of neural networks, speech synthesis, and deep learning to make conversational computing for the enterprise a reality,” states Sriram Chakravarthy, CTO and Co-founder, Avaamo.
Avaamo technologies have been deployed in more than 40 countries, including India, 11 languages and does over two million interactions per week. It has already partnered with some of the world’s leading brands across industries, including healthcare, insurance, telco, finance and service desk automation.
The rise of conversational interfaces, whether in the enterprise or consumers, is a secular trend in human computer interaction and is the first significant change after the invention of the browser, mentions Chakravarthy, adding further that they felt that the next great jump in enterprise software is conversational interfaces to talk and ask questions in enterprise systems. “That idea germinated in us, ultimately leading to the foundation of Avaamo. We wanted to build a new platform to offer Conversation-as-a-service (CaaS) as a new kind of infrastructure,” he points out.
The company is a leading conversational interface provider to banks, insurance companies and telcos in India. “Many financial institutions are choosing Avaamo to implement conversational AI based interfaces using our technology due to our security, integration, backend systems and patented method to converse intelligently,” says Chakravarthy.
Avaamo’s goal is to make conversational computing for the enterprise a reality. Chakravarthy avers that to deliver on conversational AI’s promise, fundamentally new technology has to be built to perform multi-turn discussions and execute intensive judgment tasks just like humans. “When you can do this, you can revolutionise businesses. Companies can streamline and improve their service desk and drastically improve customer care; insurers can generate quotes in minutes, and health care providers can help diabetics or cardiovascular patients better by monitoring their health care through a virtual assistant on an app.”
Reminding that Avaamo was built for a global business audience, not a single target customer segment, Chakravarthy says, ”We support multiple languages and multiple verticals. Our platform was created for a diverse set of users and people across the globe. Success is based in part on how businesses cater to a global audience. We’ve learned that people prefer to interact in their own languages, and they want to experience brands in their own language.”
Chakravarthy believes that there is no monolithic AI market. AI is being applied by problem and by industry and depending on the value proposition investors are looking for real tangible benefits of the technology in terms of “making” money or “saving” money.
Speaking about the future, Chakravarthy says, “Our plans are simple – help Avaamo become a crucial component of reinventing how business is conducted in the 21st century.” He is certain that conversational AI will radically overhaul customer service and free human time and talent for different and more engaging jobs.
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