2022 Fire Awards: Kore.ai Inc. plans to grow its market share this year. Here's how.

Kore.ai Inc. was chosen as one of Orlando Business Journal's 2022 Fire Awards honorees, who were featured in OBJ's April 29-May 5, 2022, weekly edition.

The Orlando-based conversational artificial intelligence software company — which has offices in India, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Europe and Middle East — last year closed a $50 million Series C round and secured $20 million in credit from Pearl River, New York-based Sterling National Bank. The investment dollars will be used to hire and invest in the firm's technology, the firm told OBJ.

Here's more from Kore.ai Inc. CEO and founder Raj Koneru:

What was your company’s biggest accomplishment of 2021? We witnessed the highest growth in customer acquisition and global expansion, and as a result were able to raise Series C funding of $73.5 million. This funding round, led by Vistara Growth and PNC, saw participation from NextEquity Partners, Nicola Wealth and Beedie Capital, while a strategic investment came through a partnership deal signed with Nvidia Corp. Riding on the success of wide adoption of our no-code experience optimization (XO) platform, we launched four new AI-native products that further accelerate adoption of our technology within enterprises:

How did you get it done? We were able to win investor confidence with our potential for growth and strategic relevance and leadership in the emerging high-growth conversational AI technology space. To support our growth and the demand from global customers, we opened new offices in the major cities globally: London, Tokyo, Seoul and Dubai.

How does your company stay innovative? More than 50% of our revenue is reinvested into research and development aimed at further developing the conversational AI-first technology, building intellectual property and contributing to our product portfolio. We focus mainly on two things: how to leverage AI in the best possible way and deliver on enterprise-focused scalable architectures. Our innovation is inspired by the industry challenges, customer problems, future needs, simplifying virtual assistant development and passion for experience optimization at every touchpoint. This translates into innovative ideas and product roadmaps.

What strategies have you implemented to recruit and/or retain talent in a competitive labor market? We are an open opportunity company with diversely talented individuals. Since the company was founded in 2014, it has grown from 25 people to 650-plus employees in March 2022. This has been possible only because of our ability to nurture talent and maximize the human potential of our employees.

What is the biggest challenge facing your industry? Creating awareness and confidence about the conversational AI technology. Due to bad taste from early days robotic chatbots, customers are cautious about trying AI-powered conversation or interactions automation. Most businesses, while cognizant of the fact that poor customer and employee experience adversely impacts customer satisfaction and productivity, lack resources internally to address the challenge head-on.

We have identified that issue and now are trying to address it by beginning conversations with deep technology marketing. Customers want to hear about common challenges and how new capabilities solve them. They want to hear from peers. They want to start conversations in layman's terms and only finish them (prior to purchase) with technology interrogation.

We thus have shifted our focus as a marketing and sales organization to market education and helping business people understand what they can solve and accomplish with virtual assistants. We’ve launched our own academy where we provide free coaching and certification for our platform along with free access to our technology.

What is your company’s top goal for 2022? To gain market share leadership. We are set to close fiscal 2022 with a 100% increase in revenue and addition of large marquee customers across key verticals in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. To ensure deeper market penetration, the company is looking to rope in more channel partners as well as address the specific needs of users in diverse industries through its solutions. To expand this growth further, we will focus on strategic accounts in different industries where we believe our products will have the largest impact for customers, either in generating additional revenue or increasing operational efficiencies.

We envision to significantly leverage Kore.ai Academy where we provide online training and certification to citizen developers. We are putting dedicated effort to build and support the community of citizen developers to drive product-led growth and grow this channel. This shall be the focus in fiscal 2022-23.

In the past year, what progress have you seen in the growth of Central Florida’s entrepreneurial and tech ecosystems? Although Florida is a popular destination for vacationing and short-term visitors, it also is a growing hub for innovation. In the recent past, we have seen numerous startups innovating using the latest technologies like AI, Blockchain, IoT and big data in building smarter and safer communities, simplifying visitors' experiences, payments infrastructure, enhancing workforce performance, training using AR/VR and more. There is also a good ecosystem coming in place with accelerators, incubators and support groups that help startups in their innovations, validations and customer acquisition, as well as growth journey.

What is the local technology and innovation sector’s biggest obstacle to more growth? The lack of available software-related talent in engineering, marketing and sales functions and the lack of investor focus on Florida startups.

Are you hiring now? If so, how many positions and in what time frame? In 2022, we aim to hire about 40 people.

Kore.ai Inc.

Raj Kuneru

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