Raghu Ravinutala sees a future for his AI chatbot to replace human interactions in the world of customer experience (CX).
The CEO of San Mateo-based Yellow AI still acknowledges there are times when there's no replacement for a live human being — like when a customer is seeking emotional reassurance or a personal connection that can close a sale. But when it comes to knowing when your pizza is arriving, a bot will do just fine.
That's one of the practical applications of Yellow AI, which counts pizza behemoth Domino's as one of its customers and recently raised a $78 million Series C funding round from the likes of WestBridge Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company also opened its first U.S. headquarters in August at 400 Concar Dr. in San Mateo.
Yellow AI, whose official name is Bitonic Technology Labs Inc., is registered in both Delaware and Banglore, India, where it previously operated under the name Yellow Messenger. The company rebranded globally in September under the name Yellow AI. The key to its business is an artificial intelligence platform that creates conversational experiences for customers and employees.
The chatbot itself is a polyglot that speaks more than 120 languages and is continually learning new dialects, Ravinutala told me. It's also active across across multiple communication channels ranging from Microsoft Teams to Slack to WhatsApp.
Ravinutala's own background in semiconductor and chip design was honed through professional roles at Broadcom and Texas Instruments. When he started his entrepreneurial journey in 2015, WhatsApp was the key communication platform in India that affected all areas of business, down to scheduling meetings. Ravinutala said it was this kind of broad scalability and customer potential that led him to his own idea for Yellow Messenger.
"It's like an absolutely greenfield market and the market itself is phenomenally large," he said.
He started the company with a friend of his brother's who was working at Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart. The first version of the company's product had a list of merchants and enabled consumers to chat directly with the businesses. "We named it Yellow Messenger because it was kind of like the Yellow Pages where people used to go to find the businesses," Ravinutala said.
What became clear, Ravinutala told me, is that about 80% of the interactions that were happening were fairly repetitive.
"I mean, if someone was messaging a restaurant, they're asking about booking a restaurant or asking about a menu or asking the opening hours," he said. "Then we said, oh, it's like we can automate this. Why should a human keep responding?"
Now with a rebrand to Yellow AI, a new San Mateo office and fresh funding and leadership, including a new global vice president of marketing, Carl Landers, the startup is looking to continue its growth trajectory.
Landers told me the key question for the company is if what it does overseas resonates in the U.S. or if Yellow AI needs to change its go-to-market approach. Besides Domino's, other major customers include Procter and Gamble and Unilever, as well as India's largest airline, IndiGo. The next step, however, is expanding into Silicon Valley.
"I think for many of us in North America, we're used to the other way, which is, you know, you build a great business in the U.S. and then you expand it globally," Landers said. "This is a different story."
One opportunity for the company could be filling the customer experience gap as the pandemic weathers on. Although Ravinutala told me that the pandemic has already radically transformed consumer behavior and the willingness to adopt tech-enabled services like Yellow AI
"My view is that in terms of the momentum needed for companies to adopt anything like what our platform offers, I think that transition is done, and I don't think the pandemic extending kind of accelerates that," he said. "I think that the shift is done and the market has changed for the good forever."
But with shifts, also come new competitive landscapes. Companies like Zendesk still hold dominant market share when it comes to CX contracts with major companies, but in terms of the automated AI track, local competition for Yellow AI is on the rise.
Potential rivals include Santa Clara-based Espressive and Cupertino startup Goodcall, which uses its own cloud-based conversational AI assistant for restaurants and retailers, and recently launched with $4 million in seed funding from Neo, Foothill Ventures, Merus Capital, Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascott and Xoogler Ventures. Others looking to make
