Yellow.ai
Company focusing on customer service automation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yellow.ai, formerly Yellow Messenger, is a multinational company headquartered in San Mateo, California focused on customer service automation.[2] It was founded in 2016 and provides an AI platform for automating customer support experiences across chat and voice. The platform supports more than 135 languages across more than 35 channels.[3][4]
 | |
| Formerly | Yellow Messenger |
|---|---|
| Company type | Privately held company |
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 2016 in Bangalore, India |
| Founder | Raghu Ravinutala Jayakishore Gollareddy Rashid Khan |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Number of employees | 650+ (2024[1]) |
| Parent | Bitonic Technology Labs Pvt. Ltd. |
| Website | yellow |
History
Yellow.ai was founded in 2016 by Raghu Ravinutala, Jaya Kishore Reddy Gollareddy, and Rashid Khan in Bangalore, India. Raghavendra Ravinutala and Jaya Kishore Reddy Gollareddy left their full-time jobs to establish Yellow.ai, and they met Rashid Khan at a college hackathon, where he began working with them. By January 2016, Yellow.ai had acquired 50,000 customers.[5] The same year, the company rolled out a model of the application for B2B companies. This version of the software and platform was intended to support voice and chat interactions for enterprises.[6] In 2016, the company joined Microsoft's accelerator program and SAP Startup Studio.[7][8]
In April 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the company developed chatbots to assist governments with vaccinations.[9] It launched Yellow Messenger Care to create omnichannel chatbots related to COVID-19 assistance, which helped NGOs and hospitals in their crisis management efforts.[10] In June 2021, the company rebranded itself from Yellow Messenger to Yellow.ai.[11] In 2022, Yellow.ai launched DynamicNLP, which was designed to eliminate the necessity for NLP model training.[12] In 2023, Yellow.ai announced the launch of its Dynamic Automation Platform (DAP) and revealed a new logo as part of a larger rebranding strategy.[13] In May 2023, the company also launched a proprietary small language model called as YellowG, a generative AI platform for automation workflows.[14][15] The company deployed over 120 generative AI bots for businesses in 2023.[2]
Partnership and client base
In January 2019, the company collaborated with Microsoft to work on transforming its voice automation using Azure Al Speech Services and Natural language processing (NLP) tools.[16] In February 2022, the company partnered with Tech Mahindra to develop enterprise AI technology.[17] It partnered with the e-commerce company Unicommerce in July 2020.[18] In February 2022, Edelweiss General Insurance launched its AI Voice Bot, using Yellow.ai's technology.[19] Yellow.ai implemented its AI-based customer service technology in Urja, a virtual assistant launched by the public sector company BPCL.[20] The company has also formed partnerships with Accenture, Infosys, TCS, and Wipro.[21][22]
Its clients include Sony,[23] Flipkart, Grab, Skoda, Honda, Domino's Pizza, Bajaj Finance, Volkswagen, HDFC Bank, Ferrellgas, Indigo, Adani Capital,[24] Haldiram, Lulu Group, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories and Concentrix.[25][26][27]
Funding
In June 2019, Yellow.ai completed a series A funding of $4 million led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and angel investors such as Phanindra Sama, founder of RedBus, Anand Swaminathan, senior partner, McKinsey & Company, Limeroad founder Prashant Malik, and Snapdeal founder Kunal Bahl.[28]
In April 2020, it raised $20 million in a series B round led by Lightspeed Ventures Partners and Lightspeed India Partners.[29] In August 2021, the company raised $78.15 million in its Series C funding round led by WestBridge Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.[30] The company has raised a total of $102 million so far.[31]
Awards
The company won the Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation Leadership Award in 2021.[32] Entrepreneur magazine named Yellow.ai the Best AI Startup of the Year at the Entrepreneur India Startup Awards 2022.[33] It was awarded Best Chat/Conversational Bot/Tool during the MarTech Leadership Summit 2022.[34] The Financial Express awarded it the Best Use of Conversational AI – Gold at the Financial Express FuTech Awards in 2022.[35] The company received an honorable mention in the automation solution of the Year category at the CCW Excellence Awards 2022.[36]
Forbes magazine added Yellow.ai's co-founder Rashid Khan to Forbes India 30 Under 30 2022[37] and Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 2022[38] lists, as one of the young game changers disrupting the Enterprise Technology industry. Hurun Research Institute listed the company in its 'Future Unicorn Index 2022' list for India.[39] In 2023, co-founder & CEO, Raghu Ravinutala was recognized as one of the top 50 SaaS CEOs by The Software Report.[40] Yellow.ai ranked 13th in the Bay Area and 88th nationally on the 2023 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for North America.[41]
