Niki Partners with Connect India to Strengthen Ties in 8000 Small Cities

Bharat’s online agent Niki, has partnered with Connect India, a leading logistics solutions provider to enable internet users from under-served pincodes of India to manage all their household expenses, online. Niki empowers Non-English speaking users with a unique conversational interface for doing online transactions in their own language. It handholds the upcoming internet users from Tier 2, Tier 3 India for paying monthly bills, prepaid recharges, booking bus tickets online and more, as it assists them through every step and provides assured fulfilment.

Niki is now leveraging Connect India’s large network to reach users in the remotest of areas to enable them with a natural, more convenient and faster way of transacting online through its vernacular platform. Removing language and complicated interface barriers that are the biggest roadblocks in adoption of digital payments all over Bharat, Niki lets the users place orders by simply talking in the language that they are comfortable with. It is also designed to overcome the trust deficit surrounding online payments in remote areas with its 100% fulfilment guarantee and state-of-the-art customer support.  

Connect India’s network spanning over 8000 centers in 20 states provides Niki an unprecedented access to a large and loyal customer base while Niki’s simple interface, voice capabilities, and vernacular platform create a revolutionary experience for the Non-English population of the country. India’s first-ever vernacular platform for online transactions, Niki has seen a massive 300x growth in Hindi GMV, at an annualized run rate of 40 million USD, since it launched its Hindi language capabilities in October 2018.  It is currently enabling 4.5 million users, 80% of whom are living in Tier 2, Tier 3 India.

The vernacular conversational platform makes the entire user journey right from initiation to product discovery to transaction, extremely fast, convenient and as simple as talking to a friend where users can simply talk to Niki in order to pay their monthly bills, book bus or movie tickets, browse plans, do prepaid recharges, find local deals and much more, while its personalisation always helps one choose the option, best suited for them. 

Backed by Mr. Ratan Tata, Unilazer Ventures and SAP.iO among other investors, with 4.5mn+ users, Niki.ai is the only commerce bot in Asia to have attained substantial scale. In FY18, Niki.ai hit a GMV run rate of about $30 million and a revenue run rate of over $1 million. After adding Hindi language capabilities, it also witnessed 300x growth in Hindi GMV since October 2018, annualised at 40 million USD.

Commenting on the partnership, Co-founder and CEO of Niki.ai, Sachin Jaiswal said, “While creating an impactful platform for the users of Bharat to transact online, one of the things we are constantly working towards is expanding Niki’s reach amongst the next billion users in the most efficient way. Connect India has one of the largest networks of on-ground agents and retail outlets which ties in perfectly with our goal of reaching users in the remotest areas and enabling them to manage their expenses online. Niki’s services complement Connect India’s vision and platform perfectly and this partnership is a win-win for all stakeholders involved. I foresee this partnership as being a major catalyst in realizing the Digital India dream.”