Bursting the chatbot bubble

Arun Uday is a former VC and currently the founder of Tring Chat, a mobile group chat app that allows users to search and join chat groups of interest to them. Chatbots seem to be climbing the proverbial peak of the tech hype curve with every passing day. Popular messaging apps have been attempting to outdo each other in terms of making their platforms open for bot development. Businesses are also rushing to embrace them, as evidenced by the interest they are eliciting from even staid institutions such as centuries-old banks. The frenetic action notwithstanding, the moot point, as always, is whether bots actually solve any real end-user need.