Chatbots may bring $12-bn biz for digital commerce firms

With a rising number of digital commerce firms employing their services, chatbots may bring them about $12 billion in business revenue. This is according to Swapan Rajdev, the chief technology officer and co-founder of Haptik, a leading player in the chatbot world. Digital commerce firms range from companies engaged in e-commerce and insurance to financial services, banking, travel, hotels, and gaming.

- SURAJEET DAS GUPTA

Over the next three years, chatbot companies in India are projected to generate over 20 per cent of business revenues of their customers that run digital commerce platforms, thanks to technologies such as the artificial intelligence (AI)-based ChatGPT.

With the use of ChatGPT, the conversations that bots have with customers will become more natural, conversational, and sympathetic.

Rajdev, in whose firm Reliance has a majority stake, says that while figures are hard to come by, his estimates suggest that Haptik's small and medium enterprise (SME) clients currently generate as much as 50 per cent of their business revenues through chatbots. It's a very different story for big companies; it's only 3-4 per cent for them.

"In the next three years, the India average could easily hit 20 per cent," says Rajdev.