Ratan Tata makes his 1st investment in artificial intelligence - backs Niki.ai

Niki.ai, an artificial intelligence (AI) based chatbot, announced on Thursday that Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, had invested in the startup along with Ronnie Screwvala's Unilazer, which did a follow up round to their first seed investment. Niki will utilise the funds raised to increase its merchant base and also to strengthen its technological capabilities. The startup leverages natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to converse with customers over a simple chat interface, and places orders on their behalf in seconds with partner businesses. The founding team initially spent a couple of months in Udaipur before moving to Bengaluru in July 2015. The product had initially been in beta for seven months, and the team has focussed on building and enhancing the product, while working closely with a limited set of beta users.