Conversational AI startup Kore.ai receives new investment from Naya Ventures to accelerate rapid expansion and growth

Kore.ai, a bot-based messaging platform that brings individuals, teams, and business systems together, has raised a new funding from Naya Ventures to accelerate its rapid expansion and growth. In 2018 alone,  Kore.ai experienced a 300% growth in bookings, plus the addition of dozens of new Global 2000 enterprise customers across 7 verticals in Americas, Europe and Asia. Additional funding was provided by CEO/Founder, Raj Koneru, on top of the significant funding he has made since inception. To date, Kore has raised in excess of $45 million since its inception. Naya Ventures is a US-based venture capital firm that backs early-stage disruptive technology companies with the potential to emerge as market leaders in areas like deep tech, cloud and AI.

Founded in 2013 by Raj Koneru, Kore.ai is a market leading conversational AI partner for Global 2000 companies. It provides an enterprise-grade, end-to-end Conversational AI platform available on-premise/cloud for building, deploying and managing secure, smart, conversational bots across 30 different digital and voice channels. Kore.ai partners with top ISVs and global system integrators for helping companies meet their digital transformation needs leveraging the power of enterprise chatbots. Kore.ai facilitates intelligent dialogs between people and systems so getting tasks done is as fast and simple as sending a text. The startup has repeatedly won global analyst acclaim and was most recently featured in Gartner Market Guide 2018 for Conversational Platforms, IDC Innovators: Conversational AI Software Platforms 2018 and Everest Group’s Conversing with AI – Intelligent Virtual Agents Market Report 2019.

Commenting on the company’s growth and the funding, Kore.ai Founder and CEO, Raj Koneru said,”We are at the cusp of a great journey, with conversational AI having already captured market imagination. Our comprehensive enterprise platform credentials are well established, and our clients are seeing massive ROI along with improved customer and employee satisfaction. Our vision of deploying a conversational interface to any application to improve user experience and enable automation has been proven through varied use cases.”

Kore.ai is uniquely placed with an unlimited potential for growth and strategic relevance in an emerging technology space,” said Dayakar Puskoor, Managing Director, Naya Ventures, explaining the rationale behind the investment. “Kore.ai’s performance is enviable, with an impeccable record on all aspects that a fast-moving technology company is expected to emulate – be it consistently proven leadership, growth momentum, technological relevance, innovation and engineering excellence, strategic partnerships or brand recall. We believe our collaboration through this funding will help Kore.ai scale greater heights and realize its vision of creating intelligent enterprises through conversational AI,” he stated.

To manage the tremendous growth and strong pipeline, Kore.ai appointed Michael Eckhoff as chief revenue officer (CRO) to head its global sales in 2018. Michael added: “The incredible reception of the Kore.ai platform by enterprise customers and prospects demonstrates the platform’s breadth of capabilities and product maturity in a fragmented market. We are building a world class team of account management professionals to support the market demand.”

Further, the company appointed industry veteran Devendra Kumar (DK) Sharma, ex-CIO of Citigroup International, as a full-time board member. “DK brings a wealth of experience to Kore.ai and we are excited to welcome him to our board of directors,” said Mr. Koneru. “We believe his successful track record in the technology space, together with his extensive experience will be extremely valuable as we continue to grow.”

The company has also grown its employee base significantly since last year with currently more than 250 employees focused on advanced areas of conversational AI. In parallel, Kore.ai has forged strategic industry partnerships to strengthen its joint go-to-market reach. Thousands of developers across dozens of leading consulting and system integration firms and technology/ ISV partners use Kore.ai’s platform to build industry-leading conversational AI solutions.