Coinbase acquires Indian AI startup to improve customer service

The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, Coinbase is working to enhance its customer support while growing in India by having acquired a new startup.

Coinbase publicly announced the acquisition of Agara, an artificial intelligence-enabled support platform with operations in India and the United States.

The purchase aims to grow and automate Coinbase’s customer service abilities by providing new machine learning and natural language processing tools to Coinbase’s engineering team. The deal also assures the company’s strategy to expand its tech hub in India.

The acquisition of Agara will cost Coinbase between US$ 40-50 million, stated technology-focused publication TechCrunch, quoting anonymous informer familiar with the matter. The two firms apparently expect to close the deal later this year.

Established in 2017, Agara works on machine learning and natural language processing to enhance user experience. Employing ~40 people, Agara has reportedly managed to hoard some large customers, including cloud-based software company Salesforce and major e-commerce company Shopify.

According to Mr. Pankaj Gupta, head of operations at Coinbase in India, Agara’s tech team will join Coinbase as part of the acquisition. Mr. Gupta, a co-founder of Agara himself, believes the purchase to be a win-win for Agara and Coinbase. “It’s amazing to see my worlds run over here with Agara, a startup I co-founded in early 2017 but later left to join Google,” he stated.

Agara co-founder and CEO Mr. Abhimanyu said that the firm has been able to incorporate its tech stack into phone calls-based communication with customers as well. “Some of the more complicated things we do are around phone calls. We have been working to automate much of, if not all, of the support that happens through phone calls,” he added further.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.