Niki is a one of its kind ordering app. It is a personal assistant powered by Artificial Intelligence, with whom you can chat to ease the online purchasing experience. The app is a fully automated chatbot that the users can converse with. It can understand human language in the context of the services or products the users want to buy. The app recommends the users to help them find the best services or product and almost makes instant transactions.

Niki guides with the purchase recommendations as per requirements of the customers, to reach right service and also makes the transaction by herself. The users can use Niki to search, discover, choose, make payment and complete transactions through Paytm wallet or online payment.

The aim of Niki is to simplify and make ordering convenient. And using is not at all difficult. The users just need to chat with it. The app currently caters to

• Mobile Prepaid Recharge
• Cab Booking
• Mobile Postpaid bills
• DTH Recharge
• Data Card Recharge

The upcoming services on Niki will include bus booking, flight booking, hotel booking, food ordering, electricity bill payment, water bill payment and insurance.

Founders

Four graduates from IIT KGP, Sachin Jaiswal, Shishir Modi, Keshav Prawasi and Nitin Babel together found Niki.ai. Sachin had a data analytics company Innovaccer and used to work with Oracle as a Product Manager. Keshav builds architectures at scale for Amazon for 4 years.  Shishir worked at Indiareads as the head of Strategic Initiatives. Nithin worked as a data analyst for Ispos.

User Experience

The interface consists of just a neat and convenient to use chat box, with a minimum learning curve. The app contains power buttons and dynamic buttons that appear during choice selection to ensure minimum ordering time. The users can cancel an ongoing conversation by hitting the cancel button.

Measuring Effectiveness of the Startup

In 2015, the team did a VOC of their MVP at IAMAI event. This was the first time the team spread the word about their business. The team received an overwhelming response and were able to close two clients from there.

Hardest Decision Made

The team had many hard decisions to take but the there was one decision that the team feels was important. A WhatsApp based chat assistant was coming up in their space but they were still in their Tech development phase. But they still started with faith and it worked out well.

Learnings

At times, the team gave more weight to their intuitions for decision making than data driving them. But they quickly learned about their mistake and have been scientific since.

Starting An Online Business Nowadays

The team believes there is no recipe as such, but a simple idea and like-minded people who strive hard to make the idea are needed. The idea need not be unique.

End Goal

The team wants to replace the way people do commerce. They feel that conversation can be more intuitive and natural way of placing orders. The team aims at providing a product that can deliver unparalleled conversational commerce experience. The team is striving to expand services and bring advanced technology features so that Niki becomes the Go To Platform for commerce.

Inspirational Tips

The team has three tips for all the entrepreneurs

• Be prepared to do everything
• Build a team which stands with you in tough times
• Have fun