These 3 Indian software product startups are the toast of global CIOs

Photo credit: Pixabay.

Artificial intelligence for customer support, language-as-a-service for multilingual markets, and a collaborative platform for finding tech partners – these were the picks of the hottest Indian software product startups for global CIOs at a unique event in Bangalore last night.

What’s unusual about this event is that startups make their pitches to CIOs of large companies who are their potential clients as users of innovative enterprise tech. And even before the pitches, the CIOs of companies like Colgate Palmolive, Accenture, and Bharti Airtel were polled online to select the 45 startups showcased at the InTech50 event this year.

“Since the CIOs have already expressed an interest in these startups, the chances are good of actual business deals being struck between the CIOs and product entrepreneurs following the two-day event,” points out Piyush Singh, former CIO of Great American Insurance, to Tech in Asia. Piyush conceptualized InTech50 a couple of years back in association with iSPIRT (Indian Software Product Round-Table), a non-profit think tank led by volunteer mentors from the Indian startup ecosystem.

See: 45 hot software product startups from India and their cool ideas

Senseforth’s automatic customer support

India has been typecast as the back office of the world for IT services, and the idea of InTech50 is to change that perception by showcasing innovative software products made in India. It’s fitting, therefore, that one of the three winners of InTech50 2016 picked by the attending CIOs is Senseforth, whose CEO and co-founder Shridhar Marri worked for over 15 years at India’s IT services bellwether Infosys.

Senseforth aims to be a disruptor of customer support. It uses a chat-based interface and natural language processing to automatically decipher customer queries. Beyond that, its text analytics engine learns to interpret the intent of the user to be able to respond more intelligently and accurately. “We call it intentology,” a beaming Shridhar tells Tech in Asia after receiving the InTech50 award.

Knowing the user’s intent is only half the job done. After that, artificial intelligence kicks in to resolve the customer’s query or complaint. “More than half of customer support can be handled without human intervention,” says Shridhar. This reduces response time and costs for companies.

Reverie’s language as a service

Bengali script is an art. Photo credit: Malavika Velayanikal

The choice of Reverie as one of the three winners was not surprising. It’s trying to remove one of the biggest barriers for mobile and internet businesses in a multi-lingual market like India by providing language as a service. Any app or portal can plug in the Reverie API and render its content in over 50 languages.

Reverie’s CEO and co-founder, Arvind Pani, is a seasoned techie who led the SAP team at Intel’s development center in India, overseeing several enterprise projects. What makes Reverie special is that it’s more than a translator – natural language processing and semantics technology built into it enables a contextualized interpretation for more accurate conversion from one language to another.

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