Bharti Airtel bets on startup AuthMe to bolster its AI play

Bharti Airtel is acquiring the core team of Bengaluru-based startup AuthMe, and intellectual proprietary rights of the latter’s two flagship solutions — Callup AI and Fintech OCR — to fortify its artificial intelligence (AI)-based products and services to better serve its subscribers.

As part of the deal announced on Wednesday, the core team of AuthMe will join Airtel and be a part of Airtel X Labs in Bengaluru. Airtel will now leverage the new solutions in areas such as AI-based customer services to resolve customer complaints and queries in a quick time and cost-efficient manner.

“We are rapidly scaling up Airtel X Labs, our digital innovation factory, and these new solutions will accelerate our journey towards rolling out intuitive digital products, particularly in vernacular languages, for our 430 million plus customers,” Harmeen Mehta, Global CIO, Bharti Airtel, said in a statement.

Airtel is already using AI and machine learning to enhance customer experience through its MyAirtel application and airtel. in, in a bid to increase stickiness on its network. It had also introduced the technology in its call centre operations to help its agents resolve problems