AI-based sales support start-up racetrack scouting for $10 m

Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence (AI) start-up racetrack.ai is in talks with a few tech funds to raise about $10 million (₹70 crore approx) by early March.

The company operates an AI-driven platform that enables sales support for enterprises besides addressing customer issues on real time, with the help of communication bots.

racetrack plans to use the funds to expand operations in markets such as Singapore, West Asia and the US, to add new language-based capabilities and voice-recognition features, and to expand its team from the current 27 to 100 this year.

Founded by IIM graduate Subrat Parida and Navneet Gupta of BITS Pilani, racetrack is currently working with about a dozen clients across sectors such as real estate, education, housing rentals, e-commerce and telecom, where the company’s communication chatbot Marvin helps understand the customer’s requirement for a particular business by simulating human-like conversations.

The chatbot first validates the customer’s requirements. It then analyses the inputs and gets back to the consumer with a close-to-accurate solution, according to the company. Parida, who is also the company’s CEO, told BusinessLine that communication bots are turning into a very important tool for enterprises, not only for effective consumer interaction but also to help the business minimise its customer relations cost by almost 60 per cent. It thus boosts sales (conversion) by 1.7x times.

He added that the company customises the chatbots depending on the sector requirement. However, the bot has inbuilt self-learning capabilities, allowing it to become smarter by the day.

The company is on track to develop a voice-based communication bot in different Indian languages, said Parida.

“To start with, it will be Hinglish (Hindi-English) and, by the end of this year, another two-three languages, as we enter more and more markets with small enterprises,” he said, adding that the company is quite bullish on the banking and financial services sector.

The one-and-half-year-old firm is doing about $0.5 million in sales at present and is looking at doubling it by the end of this year.

With AI, corporates are looking to cut down on manpower, enhance efficiency and improve sales, observed Parida.

From an investor point of view, AI is the flavour of the year across the world. AI start-ups recieved about $30 million from investors in 2016 along with three exits, according to a report by Bengaluru-based research firm Tracxn.

The research said there are about 200 AI companies in India but only 10 have raised a Series A round or higher in recent times.

Bengaluru-based Netradyne, which provides deep learning based computer vision for drone and automotive navigation, raised $16 million in a Series B round in June.

The AI ecosystem also witnessed three exits — Hyderabad-based Tuplejump, a data mining and analysis platform, was acquired by Apple.

Freshdesk acquired social chat room app Chatmity, and Airwoot, a customer support chatbot, in 2016.

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