India's Niki chatbot features in Facebook's global messenger bot success story

Niki chatbot, which is backed by Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, has been featured in Facebook's global messenger bot success story.

Nitin Babel, co-Founder of Niki, says it is the first and the only chatbot from India to get such a recognition. The other bots that are in the lists are Shopify, Meetic, and Hyatt. With Nikibot, one can hail a cab and pay for bills, without having to leave Messenger.

Chatbots are interactive platform where once can order, pay bills, book tickets by sending a text message just like the way you converse with friends through apps like WhatsApp and Hike. Facebook has been encouraging developers around the globe to create bots for its messenger app.



Niki.ai currently offers close to ten services including food ordering, laundry, hotel booking, and insurance. Niki makes payment easier by integrating its service with wallet. All one need to complete a transaction is to enter the One Time Password (OTP) sent to the mobile. "Going forward, we want to give the same wallet experience while making payment through bank accounts by linking it with UPI. Once that happens, the failure rate will be lower as the users don't have to move out of the bot platform," said Nitin Babel.

Unified Payments is a seamless payments mechanism that allows bank customers to send and receive money via a smartphone in real time. The biggest advantage of UPI is it does not require an account number, or bank details, or IFS code for payments.

With 75,000 users and close to 30,000 monthly active visits, Niki has seen a 10x increase in chat to order conversion on Messenger compared to the web. Nitin said that they are working closely with Facebook team on further improving week-on-week metrics like the conversion to transaction on the Niki bot.