Coinbase has acquired Agara, an AI-powered customer service platform that operates in the United States, according to the two companies Tuesday. This acquisition comes as the cryptocurrency exchange aims to make it easier for users and businesses to use the service.
Two people familiar with the matter said that the firms did not share financial details about the acquisition. However, they estimated that the deal was between $40 million to $50 million in size. Coinbase declined to comment. Abhimanyu, the co-founder of Agara and chief executive, declined to comment on the amount of the deal, citing confidentiality agreements.
According to Tracxn data intelligence platform, Agara was four years old when it began its journey in India. It now has operations in the U.S.
Agara has deep expertise in machine learning, natural language processing and machine learning that it uses to improve the user experience. Over 40 employees work for the startup. It offers integrations with many popular services like Twilio, Shopify, and Salesforce. In an interview with TechCrunch, Abhimanyu stated that Agara's focus will shift to Coinbase after the acquisition.
The firm was founded primarily with two goals in mind. The first was customer service and experience. Machine learning was the second. Abhimanyu said that the idea was to create a ML tech stack and then apply it to customer care. Phone calls are one of the most difficult things we do. He said that we have been trying to automate a lot of the support that occurs via phone calls.
He said that Coinbase will be joining the startup tech team, which a majority of which is based in India, as part of the deal. Both companies expect to close the deal in the second half of this year. This move comes just months after Coinbase laid out its strategy for India's tech hub and hired Pankaj Gupta (an ex-Google Pay executive) in India.
Agara's powerful technology will be used to automate and improve our customer experience (CX). Coinbase's top priority is improving our CX. In the last few months, we have doubled our support staff and announced that we will be able to provide 24/7 phone support and live messaging for customers by the end of this year. In a statement, Manish Gupta (EVP Engineering at Coinbase) said that this acquisition will allow us to offer our customers new personalized, intelligent and real-time support options.
