Omilia, a dynamic innovator in conversational AI, has raised $20 million from Grafton Capital to continue the growth and adoption of its advanced, human-like conversational ΑΙ
- Omilia provides an innovative AI platform for automated, conversational customer care
- Leading enterprises, across banking, insurance, telecom, and broadcast, rely upon Omilia’s platform to address hundreds of millions of customer queries per year
- The Omilia platform has been trained by billions of real-life customer interactions, and uses voice biometrics to serve customers securely, with minimal disruption
- The firm’s AI increases call capacity; allowing more customers to be served promptly, to a higher standard of satisfaction, and at lower cost
- Omilia’s technologies are available on-premise or in the cloud, with modular deployment options that can be up and running within days
- Revenues rose by over 100% in 2019, with the majority derived from North America
- London-based Grafton Capital, a software-specialist growth equity firm, becomes Omilia’s first institutional investor
LONDON 5th May 2020: Omilia – a dynamic innovator in conversational AI – has raised $20 million from Grafton Capital to continue the growth and adoption of its advanced, human-like conversational ΑΙ.
Unlike existing Natural Language Understanding software, Omilia’s customer care virtual assistant uses machine learning to offer a more human-like experience. It works on all platforms – phone, web chat, social networks, SMS, email, smart speakers and apps – and with any existing system.
As a customer explains what they need, Omilia’s contextually aware dialog management system guides them through the call, while its voice biometrics technology securely works in the background to verify who the caller is.
The benefits for customers are that queries are dealt with human-level intelligence, efficiently, without lengthy wait times, complex security protocols and hold music. The benefits for businesses include increased customer satisfaction, increased automation, and a unified platform. This takes the pressure off contact centre staff, helping them dedicate time to more complex queries.
Since being formed in 2002, by Dimitris Vassos (CEO and Chief Architect), Pelias Ioannidis (Partner and CFO) and John Nikolaidis (Partner and Chief Commercial Officer), Omilia’s machine learning platform has been trained on billions of interactions.
The company’s revenues grew by more than 100% in 2019, with the majority coming from its North American customer base. It is now fluent in 21 languages, including regional dialects and accents, and is the market leader in conversational intelligence, being trusted by the world’s biggest banks, mobile operators and insurance firms.
For these enterprise customers, Omilia has improved call capacity by 43% and boosted self-service usage by 40% while reducing internal transfers by 96%, dropping call handling time and the number of return calls by 50% and cutting costs by 20%. All of which increases customer satisfaction.
How Omilia sets itself apart
Omilia’s AI was built to mimic human-level conversation and understanding. It consists of proprietary speech-recognition software (“deepASR”), voice biometrics (“deepVB”), dialogue technology (“DiaManT”) and machine learning.
Omilia’s technology can be deployed securely both on-site and in the cloud and the company does this at scale quickly and effectively, leaning on its unprecedented 18-years of machine learning experience.
Beyond Omilia’s integrated platform, favoured by enterprises, the firm offers plug-and-play, cloud-based conversational AI services via “miniApps”. Running via Omilia’s Cloud Platform (OCP), “miniApps” can be instantly deployed without any coding or training. OCP miniApps are each independent, natural language components, configurable to different business rules and designed to handle single tasks. These “miniApps” can recognise when customers are giving addresses, telephone numbers and dates of birth; credit card details; arranging appointments, confirming information and offer generic multiple choice options.
In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, companies worldwide have had to direct customers online in order to prioritise and manage call volumes. Yet many call centres are not equipped for home-working due to a lack of infrastructure. Omillia’s platform provides a scalable, efficient solution.
“Current automated customer service technologies promise so much but deliver so little. Refreshingly, at Omilia we are not just riding the AI wave; we are delivering the advanced levels of customer care we’ve been sold for decades, at scale and with excellent customer experience. There is no greater reward for us than to hear our users say “thank you” and “I love you” to our virtual assistants…and it happens a lot!” said co-founder and CEO Dimitris Vassos. “We abandoned the legacy approaches and outdated open standards which were holding back the customer experience, and with the customer care journey at its heart, we’ve built a platform capable of human-like natural language interaction, that delivers business benefits in the real world, at scale. Comparing Omilia with current competitors, is like comparing a luxury car to an engine on four wheels. Both will get you from A to B, but you would not trust the latter for a family trip with the kids.”
Oliver Thomas, Managing Partner at Grafton Capital, will join Omilia’s board of directors. Oliver commented: “We’ve spent the past months listening to industry-leading companies around the world telling us how Omilia’s platform has transformed the performance and efficiency of their contact centre operations, whilst delighting customers. Dimitris and his team have patiently and profitably built a world-class technology platform, away from the pressures of venture financing. It is a privilege to be their first outside investor at a time when more and more enterprises are learning that Omilia’s is the only AI platform that can truly deliver a conversational customer experience at scale.”
The capital will be used to further strengthen Omilia’s direct and indirect go-to-market organisations in North America and Western Europe. Omilia will also invest to extend its technology footprint, in one of the few categories of AI that is already delivering significant value to large enterprises and their customers.
DC Advisory acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Omilia for the capital raise transaction with White & Case LLP as its international legal adviser.
About Omilia
A visionary combination of technology and art that started from a small garage, Omilia is now home to solution architects, engineers, developers, linguists and individuals that synergize and combine their expertise and passion to one goal; deliver unfeigned human experience through virtual communication. Omilia implements Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Understanding in Customer Care, providing omni-channel conversation, speech recognition and voice biometrics in order to enable enterprises to transform their customer‘s experience. Omilia has over 27 production at scale call center deployments of Conversational Virtual Agents, in 15 countries world-wide, representing 21 different languages, and serving more than 1 billion customer interactions with human-level accuracy. We are unconstrained, humane and genuine; exactly as our communication experience.
Omilia, headquarters in Cyprus
Learn more about us at omilia.com | Linkedin | Youtube | Twitter
About Grafton Capital
Grafton Capital is a software specialist growth equity firm. Founded in 2014, Grafton Capital has been the first outside investor into several of Europe’s most exciting software companies. Current investments include BOARD International (www.board.com), Starleaf (www.starleaf.com), and Softomotive (www.softomotive.com). Grafton typically invests €10m – €25m into founder-led companies with world class products in fast growing areas of enterprise technology.
