The conversational AI market is continuing to mature at an accelerated rate as a direct result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the need for contactless business models. 2020 required many chatbot and virtual agent application providers to re-think their business models to meet their client expectations. Advances in Conversational AI has made consumer self-service far more efficient and convenient than previously possible. And, as such, the expectations of what a Conversational AI solution can offer, for both businesses and consumers, has shifted significantly.

Companies no longer require one-size-fits-all chatbots and, instead, expect to deploy customized enterprise-ready solutions that take full advantage of the technology. Artificial intelligence-based conversational interfaces are rapidly transforming customer service interactions across various industries and sectors such as banking, automotive, e-commerce, healthcare, and many more.

Purpleslate was established in 2017 by Sivaram Parameswaran and Magesh Mahadevan who were bustling around with technologies in the Conversational AI space for some time and saw huge opportunities with these technologies going main-stream. They believe devices and computers are increasingly getting better at understanding the language we speak and the maturity of the underlying concepts around NLP and Voice-based technologies is only getting better by the day. This opens plenty of possibilities and opportunities for various enterprise applications at scale when one can just speak to a device or a computer to get things done.

Purpleslate is a Chennai-based Digital Transformation and Conversational AI startup, driven by a passion to build next-generation language interfaces and applications. Some of the focal point applications of the company are in the areas of Smart Transcription, Smart Virtual Assistants, and Voice based solutions on Smart Speakers and the Collab-oration platforms. Using its frame-work and accelerators, the firm helps its customers achieve faster time to market with these cutting-edge applications.

The solutions are focused more on augmenting human capabilities and the key business outcome are around operational efficiency, productivity gains, and better user experience. "Our definition of AI is not about what you see in the sci-fi movies, but simple, yet powerful ways in which AI based solutions can help augment humans in making our life simpler. Keep it simple, yet with powerful and meaningful outcomes," signifies Magesh Mahadevan.

From an execution point of view, the founders are extremely passion-ate about teaching and mentoring young talent. Till date, Purpleslate has been built with young minds from colleges across the state and nurturing them on niche skills for the modern digital world. The founders were quite impressed to see the youngsters delivering valuable solutions to the customers in a short stretch of time. Also, the company has a committed leadership team of passionate technologists and product managers with rich experience in the industry, who has worked in reputed companies like BNY Mellon, Standard Chartered Bank, Microsoft, and ANZ Grindlays.

Currently, the firm is catering to its customers in North America and India, and their solutions are heavily used in the Healthcare, Insurance, and Services industries. In the healthcare space, the solutions help medical professionals achieve higher levels of productivity with the voice-based applications while interacting with their patients and to document their medical transcription. All in all, the solutions provided by the firm helps the users do more of what they are good at and offer excellence in services to their customers.

Since inception, the company has grown multifold from a team of 2 members to a team of 50+ members. The most successful year for Purpleslate in terms of growth was during the pandemic, where it did most of the talent addition, remotely. Currently, the company is focusing on organic growth, generating value, and staying profitable. "The Language Interface related technologies would be highly commoditized soon. As much as we rely on devices like Alexa to play music and check the weather, soon, having an engaging conversation and voice-based interactions with devices would become very common even for enterprise needs.

The possibilities and opportunities are huge. Also, we are building our own SaaS offering in the Conversational AI space around a few solution themes and a team of passionate engineers is on the job. We are extremely optimistic about our product vision and can't wait to launch it soon," concludes Sivaram Parameswaran.