Freshdesk buys Airwoot to handle complaints on Twitter, Facebook with AI

Girish Mathrubootham, cofounder and CEO FreshDesk. Photo Credit: Ronald Heister PR.

Freshdesk is on a roll.

Barely two months since it bought Framebench, the customer support startup today announced its next acquisition, one that gets it clients like Snapdeal, MakeMyTrip, and Jet Airways.

This is Freshdesk’s fifth acquisition in a year.

With the purchase of Airwoot, Freshdesk is getting a better foothold in tackling customer service over social media, as more and more people take their complaints to Twitter, Facebook and the likes instead of calling a company or writing a stern email.

Freshdesk and Airwoot did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Airwoot uses machine learning to automate the process of identifying conversations on
social media that require immediate attention. These range from queries to grievances to specific incidents.

Freshdesk.

The startup was founded in 2012 by a team of PhD dropouts lead by Saurabh Arora. It raised funds from Kae Capital in 2013, and counts Rajan Anandan, Google’s managing director of Southeast Asia and India, as an investor.

“Delivering customer support via social media continues to be a challenge for many
companies given the high volume of noise in the medium,” said Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshdesk. Airwoot’s AI technology will give Freshdesk a strong platform to power social engagement centers, he said.

The Airwoot acquisition is Freshdesk’s fifth in a year. The startup is one of the few global startups born in India, and has raised over US$95 million in funding over six rounds.