Flipkart Acquires AI Speech Recognition Startup Liv.Ai to Boost Voice-Based Shopping
Aug. 22, 2018India’s leading e-tailer Flipkart has acquired artificial intelligence (AI)-led speech recognition startup Liv.ai to solve the language-barrier problem for its customers across the country.
“Acquisition of Liv.ai positions us to solve the language barrier problem for adoption of e-commerce as the startup has developed speech-to-text platform in nine Indian languages,”said the retail giant Walmart-owned e-commerce firm in a statement here.
Though the Bengaluru-based company did not disclose the acquisition cost, a company source said the start-up had been bought for $40 million (Rs 279 crore). The speech recognition is in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu.“The acquisition is in line with our vision to build e-commerce for everyone and help provide conversational shopping experience to our users,”said Flipkart Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy.
The start-up will help build voice and speech capabilities for getting more online shoppers who may prefer native language interactions on the web.“The next wave of growth of Internet users will be from Tier-2 cities, with 70 per cent of them vernacular language speakers. Given the complexities in typing on vernacular keyboards, voice will become a preferred interface for new shoppers,”said Krishnamurthy.
The voice interface also offers huge opportunities to customers to discover, search, engage and transact online in real-time.“Building a voice interface is complex and challenging in Indian context, given multiple languages and accents. At Liv, we overcame many problems to deliver a speech recognition solution for India,”said Liv co-founder and Chief Executive Subodh Kumar.
