Freshdesk, a provider of cloud-based customer engagement software, has acquired Chatimity, a social chat platform that developed artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbot technology. Chatimity was built to enable user interactions and improve engagement for its 3 million users. The acquisition is the sixth in a little more than a year as Freshdesk looks to enhance product development and capabilities within the chat platform and beyond.
"People want a fast, personalized response. Chat will play an important role in the future of communication for customer service, but scaling that infrastructure continues to be a challenge," said Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshdesk, in a statement. "With their focus on artificial intelligence and chatbots, the Chatimity team, now part of Freshdesk, has already started to create a scalable customer engagement chat platform that is future-ready."
Chatimity's multipurpose AI-based bot, MITI, uses a combination of natural language processing, state machines, and AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) to hold conversations across thousands of users in real time.
Chatimity was founded in May 2011 by former Googlers Tarkeshwar Thakur and Aravind Murthy. It was based out of Bangalore, India, and was part of Google Startup Launchpad and one of the early incubatees of the Global INcubation SERVices (GINSERV). At Freshdesk, the Chatimity team will work towards enhancing the company's live chat offerings.
"Our team was able to get a glimpse of what Freshdesk was already working on, and we immediately knew that our team and technology would complement and accelerate product development at Freshdesk with a strong focus on AI and chat tech," said Thakur, co-founder and CEO of Chatimity, in a statement. "Delivering a top-notch customer experience over chat continues to be a challenge for many companies, a problem we intend to solve with some of the next-gen chat products we are building at Freshdesk."