Yellow.ai is an AI-first customer service automation company that empowers enterprises to create memorable customer conversations through a generative AI-powered customer service automation platform. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Yellow.ai co-founder and CEO Raghu Ravinutala to learn more about the company.
Raghu Ravinutala’s Background
What is Raghu Ravinutala’s background? Ravinutala said:
“Before the idea for Yellow.ai came along, I started my career as an IC design engineer. My journey began at Texas Instruments, a company I had always dreamed of working for. After three fulfilling years at Texas Instruments, I moved on to Magma Design Automation. It was here that I found inspiration in the Indian founder, who transformed the company into a leader in its domain. Witnessing his success fueled my desire to launch my own venture.”
“The idea of entrepreneurship had been brewing in my mind since 2001, and I even dabbled in it briefly in the late 2000s as part of the founding team of a vehicle software company. Despite coming from a family background rooted in academia and government services, I remained committed to pursuing my entrepreneurial dreams.”
“Initially, I considered the semiconductor industry, but the high barriers to entry led me to explore software instead. This eventually led me to conversational AI. The transition from IC design to conversational AI may seem unconventional, but to me, it made perfect sense. Both fields require a logical flow and efficient routing of information—qualities I honed in my previous role.”
Formation Of Yellow.ai
How did the idea for the company come together? Ravinutala shared:
“The genesis of the company’s idea was quite serendipitous—it all started during a casual breakfast conversation with friends. We marveled at how effortlessly we could coordinate plans using WhatsApp, contrasting it with the frustrating experience of dealing with customer service to get my Internet repaired. This sparked the question, ‘Why can’t interacting with companies be as seamless as chatting with friends?’”
“This simple yet profound query laid the foundation for our vision: to revolutionize customer-company interactions by making them as effortless and natural as everyday conversations. My co-founders and I recognized that building such a platform would be no small feat, considering the myriad localized nuances of conversation and the need to support multiple languages to cater to a global audience. At the time, conversational (and more so generative) AI was a relatively young industry, and yet we managed to establish ourselves as a major player. That initial idea of Yellow Messenger eventually evolved into what is now known as Yellow.ai.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Ravinutala explained:
“Powered by Generative AI, Yellow.ai’s unified customer service platform automates customer and employee experiences across channels while significantly reducing operational costs by 60%. The platform is built on a multi-LLM architecture, enabling dynamic, goal-oriented, human-like conversations with nearly 1% hallucinations.
1.) Conversational Service Cloud – With Yellow.ai’s conversational service cloud (CSC) solution, enterprises can deliver real-time customer support by automating routine queries and intelligently transferring complex queries to human agents. By providing a 24×7 instant, omnichannel customer support experience with 60% reduced operational cost and faster ROI, enterprises can boost customer satisfaction and agent productivity.
2.) Conversational EX Cloud – AI’s conversational EX cloud delivers on-demand, personalized employee experiences at scale. With EX Cloud, employees get round-the-clock support with self-serve automation to address all day-to-day queries, including IT support, password resets, hardware requests, HR policy FAQs, leave applications, pay slips, and conference room bookings.
3.) Features:
- a) Goal-based Conversations – Yellow.ai’s Dynamic Chat transforms enterprise customer interactions from simple query responses to goal-based conversations by leveraging generative AI designed to minimize the need for human intervention.
b.) Dynamic Workflow Generator – The Dynamic Workflow Generator automates the creation of workflows, moving beyond traditional if-else logic to speed up and enhance the resolution process, increasing efficiency and scope.
c.) YellowG Zero Setup – Zero Setup dramatically simplifies AI implementation, allowing deployment of AI-powered bot in seconds.
d.) YellowG LLM – YellowG LLM is an advanced language model that offers a specialized and targeted approach to handle specific tasks.
e.) Generative AI-powered Inbox – The Inbox utilizes Generative AI to augment agent capabilities in Yellow.ai’s omnichannel support system.
f.) Marketplace templates – Yellow.ai has 150+ industry and use case-based prebuilt templates across retail, BFSI, manufacturing, eCommerce, travel, energy, and more. These pre-built journeys include industry-specific NLP models pre-trained on large datasets for high accuracy.
g.) Seamless integrations – With over 150+ industry-specific templates, Yellow.ai’s pre-built solutions are tailored for industries such as retail, BFSI, and manufacturing.
h.) Omnichannel support with historical context – Through our custom data platform and UUID session tracking method, the platform can identify a user across 35+ channels, including text, voice, email, web/app, and social, and fetch the context of a conversation instead of having the user repeat their entire query from scratch.
i.) Dynamic voice AI agents – The platform’s Voice AI features agents capable of human-like interactions and understanding multiple languages, dialects, and accents.
j.) Customer Data Platform for user activity-based personalization – The platform creates a detailed user profile over time based on the users’ queries, interests, past activities, and conversations across channels to segment customers & provide them with more relevant, personalized offers and responses.
k.) Analytics – Yellow.ai tailors interactions based on detailed user profiles provides actionable insights, helping businesses optimize customer engagement and satisfaction through an intuitive, graphical dashboard.
l.) Enterprise-grade security – Backed by ISO, HIPAA, SOC2, and GDPR certifications, Yellow.ai is built to meet the highest security standards and compliance requirements.
m.) Analyze – this tool is designed to assess and continuously improve bot conversations.
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Ravinutala reflected:
“When we established our company, we embarked on a collaboration with a prominent financial services firm during our first year. Though we hadn’t quite honed in on our product-market fit, we initiated the deployment of automated chat assistants for them. Initially, both parties anticipated a modest adoption rate, envisioning a few thousand users engaging with the platform. However, to our astonishment, within a matter of days, our servers were inundated with activity. User numbers skyrocketed to a million, marking a pivotal moment when we unmistakably struck upon our product-market fit.”
“This experience proved transformative, yielding invaluable insights. We discovered that much of our product development wasn’t solely driven by our internal beliefs but was also profoundly influenced by customer demand. We learned to distinguish between “push” customers, those we push our product upon, and “pull” customers, those who are drawn to our product due to a shared vision. Pull customers align with our company’s objectives, providing invaluable feedback and insights. They identify missing features and offer constructive criticism, ultimately shaping our product development trajectory. This emphasis on responding to customer pull rather than solely pushing our offerings has been instrumental in our growth and development as a company.”
Evolution Of Yellow.ai’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Ravinutala noted:
“In 2016, we embarked on our journey with a B2C product offering, swiftly amassing 50,000 monthly active users and facilitating over 20,000 transactions on the platform. However, our primary challenge lay in crafting a comprehensive customer experience package. Despite the market’s infancy, we recognized its vast potential, positioning ourselves as pioneers in the field. Encouraged by satisfied customers and optimistic about our solution’s impact, we made the strategic decision to pivot to B2B, focusing on customer-facing chatbots tailored for various service scenarios.”
“Since then, our evolution has been remarkable. We broadened our scope to encompass not only customer service but also employee experience and marketing, delving into conversational commerce. In 2021, we underwent a rebranding, transitioning from Yellow Messenger to Yellow.ai, coinciding with the launch of our voice automation offerings. These Voice AI agents seamlessly integrate with enterprise telephony systems, enhancing both customer and employee interactions across 35+ channels and 135+ languages.”
“Our overarching goal has been to provide a holistic omnichannel suite, empowering enterprises to engage with customers seamlessly across digital touchpoints. Central to this vision was the development of DynamicNLP, our proprietary Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine, a pioneering solution within the enterprise domain. By eliminating the need for labor-intensive NLP training, it significantly streamlined operations.”
“The introduction of generative AI marked another milestone, fundamentally transforming our capabilities. While we had been leveraging gen AI since 2021, we doubled down on our Gen AI and LLM roadmap in 2022. In alignment with that, we launched our Dynamic Automation Platform, YellowG, and multiple in-house LLM designed for specialized customer service applications. We very recently launched Komodo-7B, the first LLM for 11+ regional dialects in Indonesia.”
“Reflecting on our trajectory, we realized the depth of our potential as a customer service automation platform. With a diverse range of gen AI-powered solutions—from ticketing systems to knowledge base management, Agent Assist, conversational analytics, and workflow management—we are sharpening our vision to redefine the customer service industry. Our commitment to innovation and customer-centricity remains unwavering as we continue to pioneer AI-first solutions for unified customer service automation.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Ravinutala cited:
“Since landing in North America, we’ve achieved tenfold growth in the region over the past two years. This is a remarkable achievement considering we entered the market in 2021, and our expansion shows no signs of slowing down. Our success is attributed to significant customer acquisitions, continuous enhancements in product capabilities, especially in support automation and customer service solutions, ongoing product innovations, strategic partnerships, and key executive appointments. As a testament to that, we were ranked 13th in the Bay Area and 88th nationally in the 2023 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a list that recognizes the most rapidly growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies in North America.”
“We have secured new deals across various industries, such as utilities, hardware and software, finance, consumer goods, and services. Some notable customer wins include Randstad, Ferrellgas, and Logitech. We have also partnered with reputed technology partners, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Zendesk, SAP, Genesys, and Infobip, to achieve regional market share growth through strategic collaborations.”
“Our growth and momentum in the region have been validated by global analyst firms, with over 100 analyst reports featuring our company in the last two years. We have been rated 4.5 out of 5 in the Inaugural Gartner Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms and recognized as a Challenger in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms.”
“An essential achievement on our journey has been the success we’ve experienced in the realm of generative AI. In the past fiscal year alone, we’ve deployed over 120 generative AI bots, marking a significant stride forward.Presently, we’re working with over 1,100 enterprises spanning across 85+ countries, with our platform handling over 16 billion conversations annually.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Ravinutala about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“First would be our deployment for Waste Connections, one of our first customers in the North American market. Waste Connections deployed a Yellow.ai-powered dynamic AI agent (Trina) and after-hours voicebot to provide 24/7 self-serve options to customers in English and French on email, website, and voice for services like pickup scheduling, billing, and payment, reporting missed pickups, and vacation hold, with live agent transfers for complex issues. As a result, they saw 40K+ users served without any human intervention, with 100K+ unique customers served by the voice bot alone in a year.”
“Another success story is Lion Parcel, a subsidiary of the Lion Group, that specializes in logistics and delivery services throughout Indonesia. We collaborated with them to implement advanced, generative AI-powered dynamic chatbots across platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram Messages. Leveraging YellowG-powered LLM API responses, Lion Parcel’s bot dynamically provides answers, ensuring real-time and personalized assistance to customers with convenient self-service options for quick resolution of shipping inquiries such as delivery status, parcel tracking, payment updates, and more. Featuring engaging conversational interfaces, the chatbots are adept at holding succinct conversations with customers in both English and Bahasa, effectively reducing the workload of customer service agents. As a result, 84K+ active users were handled quarterly. We saw a deflection rate of 85 percent, essentially meaning queries that were automated by the Gen AI Bot with.”
Funding/Revenue
When asking Ravinutala about the company’s funding and revenue details, he revealed:
“To date, we have raised over $102 million from blue-chip investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lightspeed India Partners, WestBridge Capital, Sapphire Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures. Our last funding was in August 2021 when we raised $78.15M in Series C.”
“We have seen a 10X global expansion over the past two years and we saw sustained business growth in 2023, with the North American region key to our success. Our growth was further accelerated by the rising adoption of generative AI, piquing the interest of the region’s enterprises in our generative AI capabilities.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Ravinutala pointed out:
“Our mission at Yellow.ai is clear: to revolutionize customer service, allowing human agents to focus on fostering meaningful customer relationships. We’re dedicated to reshaping the future of customer service with our AI-first unified customer service automation platform, empowering enterprises to deliver exceptional experiences while driving revenue growth. Our growth trajectory underscores our leadership position in India, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East. As we continue to expand further into North America, Europe, and Latin America, we anticipate a revenue growth rate of 80–100% in fiscal year 2025.”
“From a product standpoint, our goal is to enhance the intelligence and capabilities of Yellow-G. Our roadmap includes:
- Introducing voice AI with built-in voice LLM functionality. This advancement will significantly automate contact centers, aiming to increase automation from 10% to over 80% over time.
- Developing more customer service-specific LLMs equipped with the understanding and capability to manage customer support tickets autonomously. These LLMs will orchestrate workflows to resolve customer queries without the need for human intervention.
- Launching Yellow-G as a versatile LLM platform, empowering enterprises to create customized LLMs tailored to specific tasks and requirements.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Ravinutala concluded:
“Imagine a world where every customer interaction is seamlessly managed, where businesses can anticipate and exceed customer needs. That’s the goal driving us forward. We are offering a full stack automation platform that redefines customer service paradigms, making them more efficient, personalized, and responsive.”
“By focusing on customer service automation, we aim to carve out a distinctive position for Yellow.ai, where our solutions become the cornerstone for enterprises looking to elevate their customer service experience to unparalleled heights.The vision is distinct in its holistic approach to automation across all enterprise interactions with stakeholders, regardless of the channel.”
“Our platform is designed to deliver a consistent, intelligent experience that seamlessly spans all customer-facing channels. This differentiation is rooted in our platform’s advanced capabilities, integrating support, engagement, and interaction into a unified ecosystem that not only meets but anticipates customer needs.”
“Unlike traditional customer service tools that may offer one or two of these features in isolation, our platform provides a comprehensive solution that addresses every aspect of customer engagement:
1.) AI-Driven Insights and Automation: By harnessing AI, we offer predictive insights, automate routine tasks, and ensure personalized customer interactions, setting a new standard for efficiency and engagement.
2.) Unified Customer View: Our platform provides a 360-degree view of the customer, enabling personalized interactions based on a comprehensive understanding of the customer’s history, preferences, and behavior.
3.) Omnichannel Consistency: We ensure a consistent and seamless customer experience across all channels, whether digital or traditional, enabling customers to move fluidly between channels without losing context.
4.) Scalability and Flexibility: Designed to scale with businesses as they grow, our platform is flexible enough to adapt to changing business needs, customer expectations, and technological advancements.”
