Haptik

Lore & Background

Haptik was founded by Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev in August 2013, launching its first product, the Haptik app, in March 2014 as a chat-based personal assistant for Android and iOS in India. By September 2014, the platform added 125 chat experts to help users with queries. Over time, it evolved into a complete conversational commerce app, achieving 2 million downloads. That same year, Haptik became the official personal assistant of Mumbai City FC and provided a customer support chatbot to SwipeTelecom. In November 2017, the company launched a full-scale enterprise-level bot management platform with an analytics dashboard.

In 2019, Haptik launched a voice bot for one of the world's largest food chains, enabling customers to place orders using Alexa and find nearest outlets with real-time product availability. In March 2019, the Government of Maharashtra partnered with Haptik to develop a chatbot for its Aaple Sarkar platform, providing conversational access to information on 1,400 government services. In April 2019, Reliance Jio bought an 87% stake in the company in a $100 million deal, and the company was renamed Jio Haptik Technologies Ltd. Later that year, Haptik acquired Los Angeles-based startup Convrg to expand technical expertise and North American outreach, and also acquired Mumbai-based Buzzo.ai, which develops customizable AI software for e-commerce. In December 2019, Haptik developed a chatbot for Tata Mutual Fund called 'Prof. Simply Simple' to handle routine queries.

In March 2020, the Government of India launched a WhatsApp chatbot called MyGov Corona Helpdesk, built by Haptik, to create awareness about coronavirus. In October 2021, Haptik launched the Interakt App for MSMEs amid the growth of Direct To Consumer brands. In December 2021, Haptik received a special honor from the Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakshi Lekhi for partnering with Mygov on the Corona Helpdesk. In 2022, the company announced plans to build a chatbot for RedDoorz, a hotel management and ticket booking platform in Indonesia.

Reader's Guide

Haptik's significance lies in its pioneering role in the conversational AI space in India and its subsequent integration into Reliance Jio's vast ecosystem. As one of the first modern conversational AI platforms, Haptik demonstrated the viability of natural language interfaces for enterprise applications, from customer support to government services. Its development of the MyGov Corona Helpdesk, the world's largest WhatsApp chatbot for COVID-19, serving over 21 million users, showcased the platform's scalability and societal impact. The acquisition by Reliance Jio in 2019 for $100 million marked a major validation of the technology and positioned Haptik within a conglomerate with close to 500 million customers and notable investors including Google, Facebook, Silver Lake, and KKR. Haptik's legacy includes advancing conversational AI across industries such as finance, insurance, healthcare, and e-commerce, and its open-sourcing of its proprietary Named Entity Recognition system in 2017 contributed to the broader AI community. The company's work with governments, Fortune 500 brands, and startups alike underscores its role as a key enabler of AI-driven customer interaction.

Did You Know?

• Haptik built the world's largest WhatsApp chatbot for COVID-19, the MyGov Corona Helpdesk, which was utilized by over 21 million users across India.
• Haptik open-sourced its proprietary Named Entity Recognition system at the Chatbot Summit in Berlin on 26 June 2017.
• The company developed a voice bot for one of the largest food chains in the world, allowing customers to place orders using Alexa.