[Funding alert] Voice AI platform Observe.ai raises $26M in Series A round from Scale Venture Partners, Nexus, others

California-based AI startup Observe.ai has raised $26 million as part of its Series A round. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from Nexus Venture Partners, Steadview Capital, 01 Advisors, and Emergent Ventures. The startup had raised $8 million in its pre-series A round in August last year.

This latest funding will allow Observe.ai to expand its US-India team globally and accelerate product development. Besides the funding, Andy Vitus, Partner at Scale Ventures, will join the board of Observe.ai.

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Founded in May 2017 by Akash Singh, Sharath Keshava, and Swapnil Jain, Observe.ai empowers call centre agents to do their jobs better. Its voice AI platform provides the agent with real-time feedback on customer sentiment, and guides them on the next best action during a customer call.

The AI platform listens to the call stream in real time, uses deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) to understand the context and generates suggestions and guidance for the agent. Though headquartered in California, Observe.ai has an office in Bengaluru.

Swapnil Jain, CEO and Co-founder of Observe.ai, said,

"Legacy speech analytics systems are simply not meeting the needs of the world’s top brands. Today’s customer service agents have a unique ability to emotionally connect with customers, and are often a brand’s only frontline representatives. This investment will fuel our mission to elevate agent performance through AI-based coaching and insights."

The pre-series A round, which was led by Nexus Venture Partners, saw participation from MGV, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Hack VC. After graduating out of Y-Combinator, the startup raised seed funding of $1 million and $120,000 from Emergent Ventures and Y-Combinator respectively.

Observe.ai claims to be using the latest speech, natural language processing, and deep learning technologies to analyse 100 percent of customer conversations and provide adaptive coaching, including completely automating some parts of the quality assurance and compliance tracking processes. The platform becomes smarter with each call analysis.

According to a report by Radiant Insights, global outsourced customer services market is projected to reach $84.7 billion by 2020. Another study says that companies lose more than $62 billion due to poor customer service. Other prominent players that use AI in the customer service industry includes Neva.ai and DigitalGenius among others.

Andy Vitus, Partner at Scale Venture Partners said,

"Observe.AI is already disrupting the $300 billion voice customer service market by rethinking how agents are coached and the way top brands provide personalised customer experiences.”

The startup also announced that it has been accepted into the Microsoft for startups programme through which Microsoft's customers can leverage the platform through its Azure marketplace.

Over the last year, the startup claims to have signed 100 customers and forged partnerships with the likes of Microsoft, Talkdesk, ERCBPO, and itelBPO. In the past 12 months, Observe.ai has signed 100 customers and formed partnerships with leading organizations like. Brands like TripAdvisor, Concentrix, ClearMe, and Root Insurance use the platform.

(Edited by Megha Reddy)

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