Conversational AI Startup yellow.ai Raises $78 Million

Existing investor Lightspeed Venture Partners also partook in the funding round, which brings total funding raised so far to a whopping $102.15 million.

This funding follows the $24 million the company raised in April this year in the Series B round of funding.

Yellow.ai

Founded in 2016 by Raghu Ravinutala, Rashid Khan and Jaya Kishore Reddy, yellow.ai is the world’s leading CX automation platform that provides an omnichannel conversational AI tool to enhance and automate customer experiences and bring AI to the benefit of large brands and enterprises.

yellow.ai has chat and voice bots in over 100 languages and across more than 35 channels like Web, WhatsApp, Instagram, In-App, IVR, Contact Center and more.

The startup has clients spread across 30 countries including giants like Sephora, MG Motors, Bajaj Finserv, Food Panda, BPCL, Waste Connections US, and Tata.

Future plans

With the infusion of fresh funding, yellow.ai will deepen investments in global expansion, strengthen its leadership positions in 50+ countries, including India, UK, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and the United States. The firm also stated that it is planning to hire top-class talent across regions, and apply R&D applications in hyper-automation.

Raghu Ravinutala, Co-founder and CEO, yellow.ai, remarked, “With our rapid client and revenue expansion in India and across the world, we’re geared to become the global leader in the CX Automation space and are bullish on building our product, partnerships, teams, and community to truly democratise AI in the near future.”

Investors’ opinion

Commenting on the investment, Sumir Chadha, Founder and Managing Partner, WestBridge Capital, said, “What impressed us the most is the speed at which customers deployed yellow.ai for support automation and quickly scaled to commerce, HR, and other use-cases. This pattern is a testimony to the platform’s capability of creating an impact across the board thereby becoming a pivotal AI-partner.”

Further remarking about the funding, Jai Das, Co-founder, President, and Partner at Sapphire Ventures, said, “We’ve looked at hundreds of customer service and experience platforms over the years, but what caught our eye about yellow.ai was their impressive technology and growth, achieving 4X year over year growth despite the pandemic. Sapphire is looking forward to this partnership, and to supporting yellow.ai’s mission to revolutionize customer experience with better service.”