Airtel acquires strategic stake in conversational AI-focused startup Voicezen

Bharti Airtel has acquired a strategic stake in Voicezen, an early-stage startup focused on conversational artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

The acquisition has been made under its Airtel Startup Accelerator Programme, the company said on Thursday.

Gurugram-based Voicezen has been working on developing advanced solutions that leverage machine learning, AI, speech-to-text and voice technologies to offer real-time analytics to help brands serve customers better.

The global conversational AI market size is expected to grow from 4.2 billion dollars in 2019 to 15.7 billion dollars by 2024.

The megatrend will be driven by surging demand for AI-powered customer support services and omnichannel deployment. Increasing customer engagement through social media platforms and integration of advanced AI capabilities will offer massive opportunities.

The investment will give Airtel preferred access to Voicezen's technologies, which can be deployed across its customer touchpoints in multiple languages.

These solutions will offer real time analytics and insights to make Airtel's conversations with its customers more engaging and frictionless and enable faster resolution. It will also allow Airtel to make contextual offers to customers based on real time conversations.

Voicezen is the third startup to become a part of the Airtel Startup Accelerator Programme. By becoming a part of this programme, Voicezen will get the opportunity to deploy its technologies on a massive scale and work closely with Airtel on developing India-first platforms of the future.

( With inputs from ANI )