Haptik acquires E-commerce Chatbot Buzzo.ai

Artificial Intelligence chatbot firm Haptik, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd, has acquired a Mumbai based conversational commerce start-up Buzzo.ai. The deal was valued at $3-4 Million.

Buzzo.ai offers personalized recommendations to users, based on insights extracted using artificial intelligence algorithms on user reviews across the web. Following this acquisition, Haptik will now be able to further enhance voice and chat commerce solutions for its customers globally, and leverage the platform to power multilingual experiences.

This is the second acquisition by Reliance Jio-owned Haptik in the last three months. Earlier in July, Mumbai-based Haptik acqui-hired Convrg, a Los Angeles-based startup that develops chatbots, to serve customers in North America.

Haptik lets customers chat with voice assistants to complete daily tasks such as online shopping, travel bookings, food delivery among others. The company claims to have reached over 100 Mn devices and processed more than 2 Bn conversations till date. Some of its notable clients and enterprise partners include Samsung, Oyo Rooms, KFC, Coca-Cola, Tata Group, and Club Mahindra among others.

Oyo Hotels acquires Innov8

Oyo Hotels and homes, the world’s third-largest chain of hotels, homes, managed living and workspaces has confirmed its acquisition of Innov8, a co-working spaces provider, highlighting the company’s increasing focus on the fast-growing segment.

Charting out its multi-brand approach to the workspace’s opportunity in India, Oyo introduced three co-working brands under Oyo Workspaces: Innov8, Powerstation and Workflo for upper mid-scale, mid-scale and economy segments, respectively.

 

OYO Workspaces is set to open the door to its more than 21 workspaces, with over 15,000 seats across more than 10 cities in India, it said in a statement. Of these, Innov8 is currently spread across six cities—Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Chandigarh and Mumbai, with 16 centres hosting over 6,000 employees of brands like Swiggy, Paytm, Pepsi, Nykaa, OLX and Lenskart. Powerstation has one centre in Gurugram with over 1,000 seats and Workflo has set up four centres across NCR, Hyderabad and Bengaluru with a hosting capacity of over 1,500 seats in total already.

Oyo pegs co-working spaces to be a $20 billion business opportunity in India by 2020. Oyo’s entry into the workspaces business comes at a time when India is already seeing the emergence of several large companies in this segment, including the likes of WeWork India, CoWrks, Awfis and Smartworks.

GroupM to acquire The Glitch

WPP owned media agency GroupM has agreed to buy a majority stake in the independent digital creative agency The Glitch, which will retain its branding. The acquisition will strengthen GroupM growth plans by offering its clients access to a wide portfolio of digital marketing services and content solutions.

The Glitch employs 240 people working out of offices in Delhi and Mumbai offering digital, planning and content services. It handles over 30 clients across brand categories with some of its key clients such as video streaming platform Netflix; fast moving consumer goods firm Hindustan Unilever, dating app Tinder and online hospitality firm Oyo Rooms.

GroupM operates WPP’s media agencies including Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom, Wavemaker, Essence and Motivator in India. Its primary purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP’s media agencies by operating as leader and collaborator in trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, and proprietary tool development. It handles blue chip clients such as consumer goods firm ITC Ltd, telecom firm Vodafone, retail chain Shoppers Stop, auto giant Tata Motors, e-commerce platform Myntra, liquor company Pernod Ricard and Hero MotoCorp Ltd.

In January last year, GroupM acquired a majority stake in the media agency MediaCom India, a joint venture between GroupM India and Sam Balsara, the principal shareholder of the Madison Media group. MediaCom India continues to operate as an independent brand.