Flipkart makes voice commerce play with Liv.ai deal
Indian e-commerce venture, Flipkart, has acquired artificial intelligence (AI) startup Liv.ai for around $40 million.
Liv.ai has built a platform that translates speech to text in 10 Indian languages. The acquisition is part of Flipkart’s move to attract lower-income people not yet shopping online.
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Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Flipkart Chief Executive, says that “the next wave of growth of internet users” is coming from beyond India’s major cities. New users will want to access online services in vernacular languages, which most would never before have written using a keyboard. “Given the complexities in typing on vernacular keyboards, voice will become a preferred interface for new shoppers,” he comments.
The company expects to onboard more than 200 million new users with the help of Liv.ai’s technology. The latter's 20-member team, including its Co-founders Subodh Kumar, Kishore Mundra and Sanjeev Kumar, will become a part of Flipkart’s centre of excellence for voice solutions, which aims to accelerate an end-to-end conversational shopping experience for its customers. The voice integration could be available in some parts of the e-tailer's platform within the next six to eight months.