Polish startup Talkie.ai, which offers Artificial Intelligence solutions for customer service automation, has raised USD 2.6 million from a Polish-Austrian consortium of VC funds. Talkie.ai will use the funds to further specialize in creating technology for healthcare industries and to expand its customer base in the United States, from where more than 20 percent of Talkie.ai’s customers already come. Supporting healthcare industries with specialized off-the-shelf solutions is driving Talkie’s next phase of operations.
Talkie.ai offers fully automated customer service solutions for organizations where the leading channel of contact is a telephone hotline. Hotlines are particularly important for the healthcare industry. Challenges such as the growing or seasonally varying volume of calls from patients, the need for 24/7 availability of medical registration, or the necessity to offer multilingual telephone-based patient support, have great potential for being automated with voice AI solutions from Talkie.ai. The company also offers automation services for optimizing other common hospital and clinic processes, such as allowing callers to make and manage appointments as a self-service, order prescriptions, and provide information on pricing and availability of services, or basic medical triage. The Talkie platform also integrates with patient appointment management systems, as well as with a number of the largest providers of call center systems on the market.
Talkie.ai also designs and develops machine learning algorithms that provide a level of AI natural language understanding that is geared towards the specific needs of the healthcare industry.
“We intend to use the financing we raised to further develop our healthcare offering and expand overseas, primarily in the US, from where we already derive more than a third of our revenue. Given the scale of the healthcare market in the US, we see the greatest growth potential there. We also anticipate further expansion of our team, as well as the introduction of off-the-shelf offerings for other industries, tailored to their specific needs,” explains Pawel Lipinski, CEO and one of the founders of Talkie.ai.
Focusing on a specific industry has enabled Talkie.ai to create voicebots that achieve more than 90 percent accuracy in understanding caller intent after just the first 10 data samples. And using voice cloning technology makes the voicebots sound more natural, which enhances the caller’s experience.
“With our bots, you just want to talk. This is important because our solutions typically handle about 80 percent of customer inquiries, reducing call center operating costs by up to half. This is also one of the reasons for the interest in the healthcare industry. In wealthy yet aging Western societies, there is a growing demand for efficient remote handling of patient inquiries. At the same time there is strong pressure to reduce costs through automation,” says Ada Andruszkiewicz, Head of Operations at Talkie.ai.
Talkie.ai’s advantage over other solutions of this type is short implementation times, which can range from as little as one day for the simple business processes to just under several weeks for more complex implementations. Configuration and operation of the voicebots is done from an administration panel that gives the user full autonomy and control over their operation. If the client chooses one of Talkie.ai’s standard, industry-specific solutions, implementation does not require writing a single line of code. The company also offers the ability to customize its product to meet the specific needs of a particular company.
“The solutions offered by Talkie.ai respond to current economic trends: rising labor costs and automation of business processes. This translates into a growing demand for conversational bots using artificial intelligence. We were convinced to invest by the competence of the founding team and the finished product. The Talkie.ai solution surprises us with its simplicity of use, speed of implementation, as well as quality – much higher compared to solutions I have had the opportunity
to observe in many companies,” says Krzysztof Bachta, managing partner of the 4growth VC fund, consortium leader of the current funding round.
“New technologies, Artificial Intelligence – based, are an opportunity and a developmental necessity for the health care system. Civilizational health challenges require the introduction of new digital solutions, optimization of operations and practical applications of Artificial Intelligence. The Polish startup Talkie.ai is responding to such demands, boldly entering the next stage of growth and
thinking about further expansion into the US market. NIF is making an investment in the company together with its partners, recognizing its huge market potential,” says Krzysztof Szubert, CEO of NCBR Investment Fund.
The global market for conversational Artificial Intelligence is expected to reach $16.2 billion in 2024. By 2027, in the healthcare sector alone, the market for virtual assistants is expected to be worth $2.83 billion. Currently in the United States, 80 percent of patients contact their healthcare providers by phone, but only 4 percent of those providers use automation capabilities.
Talkie.ai was founded in 2018. In 2020, the startup raised its first round of funding, which enabled it to validate its product and business strategy, and accelerate growth. In early 2021, the company launched operations in the United States. It currently serves dozens of customers in Poland, the UK and the US. More information at www.talkie.ai
The current funding round for Talkie.ai included the following funds: 4growth VC (consortium leader), NIF ASI (co-investment with 4growth VC), Satus Starter, FundingBox, Gateway Ventures (Austrian VC fund) and Movens VC (follow-on to an earlier investment). In addition, the shareholders include the LT Capital fund, which invested in the company at an earlier stage of its development.
