Coinbase is purchasing Agara, an AI-powered customer support platform, the two companies said Tuesday, as the cryptocurrency exchange seeks to make it easier for consumers to join and seek help. The companies did not disclose the acquisition’s financial terms, but two people familiar with the situation informed me that the purchase is worth between $40 million and $50 million. A representative for Coinbase declined to comment. Abhimanyu, the co-founder, and CEO of Agara, likewise declined to comment on the deal’s magnitude, citing a confidentiality agreement.
According to data analytics platform Tracxn, the four-year-old Agara, which began its journey in India and now has operations in the United States, had received around $7 million from Blume Ventures, RTP Global, UTEC Japan, and Kleiner Perkins before the acquisition.
Agara has developed extensive competence in machine learning and natural language processing, which it employs to enhance the user experience. The company, which employs over 40 employees, has a number of major customers throughout the world and offers integrations with Salesforce, Shopify, and Twilio, among others. Agara will focus on Coinbase after the acquisition, Abhimanyu told TechCrunch in an interview.
“When we first launched the company, we were primarily interested in two things. The first was customer service and assistance. Machine learning was the second. “The aim was to build an ML tech stack and apply it to customer service,” Abhimanyu explained. “Phone calls are one of the most sophisticated things we do.” We’ve been attempting to automate as much as possible, if not all, of the phone-based service,” he added. As part of the acquisition, the startup’s engineering team, the majority of which is based in India, will join Coinbase, he added. The two companies plan to complete the transaction later this year. Coinbase announced the move months after laying out its plan to establish a tech hub in India and hiring Pankaj Gupta, a former Google Pay employee, to lead the effort.
“We want to automate and improve our customer experience (CX) products by leveraging Agara’s sophisticated technology.” Coinbase’s customer experience is still a major priority; in the last few months, we have more than our support personnel and announced that at the end of the year, we will offer 24/7 phone support and live to message. We’ll be able to deliver more tailored, intelligent, and real-time support options to our clients as a result of this purchase,” said Manish Gupta, EVP of Engineering at Coinbase, in a statement.
