Has Flipkart Bought This AI Firm to Build its Voice Assistant?

Walmart-owned Flipkart has bought Liv.ai to improve its voice-based search recognition for consumers.

Liv.ai will be entrusted with offering voice-based features for Flipkart users. 

(Photo: The Quint)

Flipkart, which is one of the leading online shopping platforms in India, has announced that it has acquired AI-led speech recognition startup Liv.ai this week.

The undisclosed deal is likely being designed for Flipkart to cater to voice-search needs of consumers in varied parts of the country. Voice recognition could be just the start, with more extensive voice assistants, like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri could build on in the coming years.

Flipkart has heavily focused on artificial intelligence for its back-end shopping experience and with Liv-ai it could expand its base around the technology.

Founded in 2015, Liv.AI claims to be the first Indian company to build speech-to-text APIs that enable low-latency speech-to-text conversion in 10 Indian languages such as Hindi, Marathi and Telugu among others.

Flipkart highlighted in its statement that the entire Liv team will be joining Flipkart as a part of the deal and drive further developing the voice solutions, integration with Flipkart app and developing use cases for various categories.

This approach looks reminiscent to Amazon’s early days with Alexa, which has evolved to become a full-fledged voice assistant for smartphones as well as smart speakers.

The acquisition is in line with Flipkart’s vision to solve ecommerce through technology innovations. It will help build voice and speech capabilities to help get the next 200 million online shoppers, who will prefer native language interaction on the web.

Flipkart India statement

It’s interesting that all of a sudden major technology behemoths are eyeing the vernacular space, with consumers situated in the Tier III and IV being their primary focus. Google has repeatedly talked of the potential of voice-based search in India, which has made the feature accessible on affordable devices like JioPhone from Reliance.

Liv.ai app caters to multiple Indian languages. (Photo: The Quint)

A recent KPMG study on Indian languages reiterates what Flipkart and the product industry are looking to target.

Ninety percent of new users coming online in India are native language speakers and typing and searching in English is complex for them. Hindi internet user base is likely to outgrow English user base by 2021 and along with Marathi and Bengali users will drive volume growth.

<a href="https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/in/pdf/2017/04/Indian-languages-Defining-Indias-Internet.pdf">KPMG study on Indian Languages </a>

Indian language internet users are expected to grow at a CAGR of 18 percent to reach 536 million in 2021. Also, nine out of every 10 new internet users will be Indian language users. 

Given the complexities in typing on vernacular keyboards, voice will become a preferred interface for new shoppers.

Flipkart India statement

Will Flipkart Make it Work?

It’s a bold move by the Walmart-owned online platform, but making AI-based speech recognition will take more than just buying a startup that specialises in the field. Flipkart has a history of buying companies, but most of them either die out or get absolved by the company, which in turn comes to nought.

Liv.ai speech app is accurate with its speech recognition. Even in Hindi. (Photo: The Quint)

Looking at Liv.ai and its capability right now, they’ve got an Android app called Liv.ai speech, which lets you convert voice commands into speech. During our experience with the app, the speech recognition was fairly accurate and now the same team will be entrusted with integrating its product in Flipkart and its future set of features.