Formerly | zabbed |
---|---|
Founded | 1 March 2015 Udaipur, India [1] |
Founder |
|
Headquarters | , |
Number of locations | 1 (2018) |
Area served | India |
Number of employees | 50 [2] (2018) |
Website |
niki |
Niki was an artificial intelligence company headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. It was founded in May 2015 [3] by IIT Kharagpur graduates Sachin Jaiswal, Keshav Prawasi, Shishir Modi, and Nitin Babel.
The Niki android app was launched for a limited beta in June 2015, [4] then released for public during YourStory's TechSparks 2015, and is a Tech30 company.[ clarification needed] The company raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding [5] from Unilazer Ventures, [6] a Mumbai-based VC firm founded by Ronnie Screwvala, in October 2015. This was followed by another seed funding round by Ratan Tata in May 2016. [7] The company then raised US$2 million in Series A round of funding from SAP.iO, existing investors and some US and German-based investors, among others. [8] Niki.ai shut down in October 2021 as per media reports. Website not working. [9]
The product is an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot which works as an intelligent personal assistant, named Niki. Leveraging natural language processing and machine learning, Niki presents a chat-based [10] natural language user interface to the users where they can interact with Niki in their natural language. Niki understands how users chat in India, [11] deciphers the words, in the context of product/services that they would like to purchase, and comes up with apt recommendations.
Initially, it was only available on the Android platform as a mobile app. The company has expanded its operations to the Facebook Messenger and Apple iOS platforms. [12] The company aims to soon be present on more messaging platforms like Slack and WhatsApp.
The company currently provides 20+ services to over 2 million consumers, covering a wide spectrum ranging from utility services like mobile recharge, bill payments, travel services like cabs, [13] buses, hotels [14] and entertainment services like movies and events. Services such as flights and healthcare are also planned. [15]
In September 2017, Infosys Finacle joined with Niki.ai to provide chat-based service to banking customers. [16]
In August 2017, Niki partnered with LazyPay to enable a 'buy now, pay later' feature for its users. [17]