Freshdesk makes sixth acquisition, sets sights on better AI and chat

It seems Pac-Man is in the house – today, customer engagement platform Freshdesk has announced its sixth acquisition in just over a year: Bangalore-based social chat platform Chatimity.

Founded in May 2011 by former Google Music Search employees Tarkeshwar Thakur and Aravind Murthy, Chatimity uses artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbot technology to facilitate user interaction and engagement. It is available as a software developer kit that can then be integrated into an app to provide a chatbot. The startup currently has three million users.

Now a part of Freshdesk, Chatimity’s team will upgrade the software-as-a-service (SaaS) company’s AI chat capabilities.

“People want a fast, personalized response. Chat will play an important role in the future of communication for customer service but scaling that infrastructure continues to be a challenge,” said Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshdesk.

Chatimity’s bot Miti uses a combination of natural language processing, state machines, and artificial intelligence markup language to have thousands of conversations at the same time.

Chatimity was previously incubated at Global Incubation Services (GINSERV) and was a part of Google Startup Launchpad.

Power-up

Chatimity’s team. Photo credit: Chatimity.

Freshdesk is on fire this year – in May, it became the first Indian startup to enter Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for customer engagement. A month later, it launched a Salesforce rival.

Last year in August, Freshdesk made its first acquisition – Bangalore-based live video chat and co-browsing startup 1Click. In October and December respectively, it added social recommendation startup Frilp and user engagement company Konotor (now called Hotline) to its umbrella. This year, it acquired online team collaboration business Framebench in February and Airwoot in April.

Its Pac-Man game isn’t just strong in the startup acquisition sector – just two months ago, it landed WalmartLabs’ founder as its senior vice president of engineering.

Founded in 2011, Freshdesk is backed by Tiger Global Management, Accel Partners, and Google Capital. Based in California, it also has offices in the UK, Australia, India, and Germany. Its 80,000 customers include 3M, Honda, Toshiba, and Cisco.

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from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/freshdesk-acquires-chatimity-ai-chatbot
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