In conversation with Ankit Prasad, Bobble AI

Ankit Prasad is the CEO and Founder of Bobble AI. With a longstanding interest in technology & startup, he has a ferocious appetite for risk-taking and pursues objectives with relentless resourcefulness.

Agency Reporter- As we start the interview, can you let our reader’s clue in more about Bobble AI?

Bobble AI is the World’s first Conversation Media Platform that is enriching everyday conversations because there is nothing more authentic and persuasive than what one friend says to another. With expressive and personalized content including stickers, GIFs and emojis, deep localization with over 100 languages, AI-based contextual recommendations, and much more. Bobble AI is transforming conversations of over 30 million users and counting through its vernacular and global keyboard applications.  Demonstrating enormous potential and performance, Bobble AI is backed by some of the most celebrated angels in the Indian startup ecosystem, Affle India, SAIF Partners, and Xiaomi – India’s No. 1 Smartphone brand. 

AR- How is the Bobble AI different from the biggies like Google’s Gboard and Microsoft Swiftkey?

The very first expectation a user has from any keyboard is that it should have an amazing typing experience which is very well reciprocated by Bobble Keyboard applications, not just in English but in more than 100 languages including 36 Indic. Bobble AI keyboard technology is also regarded as the most engaging, most retaining, and most viral keyboard by 3rd party credible reports, courtesy its conversational content (Stickers, GIFs, Emojis) personalization offering.

While other keyboard apps are still behaving like a mere utility, Bobble AI has evolved into a holistic Conversation Media Platform supporting all the needs of the end consumers when it comes to online conversations. Unlike others, Bobble AI proactively works with brands in closing “the messaging gap” i.e. brands can inject their story via rich text, stickers, GIFs, and emojis, into the most powerful communication channel — everyday conversations between friends & family. Not in an annoying, digital advertising way, but in the same way that brands play a hallowed role in say, a teenager’s bedroom. Moreover, our competitors believed in monopolistic terms while dealing with OEMs, while we have always preferred to create larger value for OEMs and thus rapidly gaining market share against the biggies

AR- What are the industry challenges you have observed that coerced you to jump into the integrated and conversational intelligence-based services?

The Millennial, Generation Z, and younger gravitate towards a more intimate experience online. These are the people who have never lived without the internet, so the relationships they build on these platforms are often their first point of contact. They are practically living on messaging platforms including WhatsApp, Snapchat, FB Messenger, Instagram Direct, iMessage, and more — talking about movies & web series, apps, food, and clothing brands they love.

Absence during these colloquial conversations can have huge ramifications for brands, but, brands do happen to break into messaging sometimes via a meme or GIF, however they could not get all the benefits of a holistic digital media platform:

• They know nothing of the user’s intent.
• The ability to employ sophisticated targeting is almost non-existent.
• They are all tied to a specific platform, for example, Facebook, and therefore miss out on a cross-platform solution and control on voice.
• The real-time reporting is either weak or just plain missing
• There is no platform to drive meaningful and persuasive brand messages – that leave that everlasting effect on the minds of consumers and drives them to share ahead. 
• Despite taking a much more expensive route, most businesses do not know who their consumers really are? What are their likes and dislikes? What personas they have?

That’s why we invented a powerful ‘Conversation Media Platform’ – Bobble AI. Brand integrations into conversations are set to disrupt how brands engage with consumers via emojis, stickers, and GIFs. When chatting about travel plans, and a fun sticker of an Airline pops up, imagine the everlasting brand impression it will leave on the mind of both sender and receiver of the message. The possibilities are endless with this innovative form of marketing.

According to Bobble AI’s data intelligence, in India, 70 Billion chat messages are sent every day; an average user spends 30 minutes on their keyboard while messaging on applications such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. These conversations hold the intent, which influences purchase decisions. Bobble AI provides unique insights by complying with privacy laws, which helps brands, advertisers, market research firms, and many others in creating groundbreaking business strategies. With precise real-time targeting across apps on consumers’ intent and needs, Bobble AI enables businesses to communicate with the user when it matters the most – At just the right time.

Conversation media is natural, authentic and most of all is here to stay.

AR- Stickers, GIFs, and emojis are already butting their heads with traditional words, but could they take over completely, especially with technology like Bobble Indic Keyboard in place with its exhaustive set of Indian and Global languages?

Since body language and verbal tone do not translate into text messages or emails, we’ve developed alternate ways to convey nuanced meaning. The most prominent change to our online style has been the addition of new-age hieroglyphic language: Stickers, GIFs, and Emojis. The yellow cartoony faces with various expressions, personalized stickers, super funny GIFs, and more have become the perennial language of the millennial and Gen Z.

On various occasions data has validated that these visual creatures are an inevitable part of conversation experience. Even during the nation-wide lockdown, users have been pouring their thoughts about the virus with the help of emojis. The sudden shift in the mood of the country is reflected in their choice of emojis. Millennials went to use ‘Mask Emoji’ ‘Folded hands’ emojis. The usage of such emojis went to increase by 3000%.

Bobble AI provides users with 100+ Indic and International languages, as a result, emojis, stickers, and GIFs are already replacing words. According to Bobble AI’s data intelligence, smartphone users send more than 70 Billion chat messages every day which includes more than 10 Billion emojis and 700 Million Stickers / GIFs.

AR- The past few months have been challenging for the businesses, how did you deal with the pandemic?

COVID19, in ways more than one, has changed the way people behave or express themselves. Through the use of effective tech and digital space, we are ensuring that our team stays connected amidst the pandemic and physically far from each other. Our deployments are completely remote in nature and support seamless integration thus, ensuring we reduce the possibilities of touch and infections.

Pandemic has given us many lessons – one of which is that physical branding is no more a sustainable channel, it is impacted severely due to lack of footfalls. Brands do understand it and are moving towards digital platforms. The problem is, most of the digital platforms work on CPC or CPM models which is good for some transactional companies but for the brands, they don’t serve as an effective branding channel. For those reasons, we took the best of the two worlds – effective branding coupled with measurable and high ROI, which was a dream for every brand marketers. We are delighted to introduce ourselves as a ‘Conversation Media Platform’ establishing an innovative, personalized, and non-intrusive mechanism of branded content design, and delivery for leading brands and agencies. During the pandemic, we are offering a special package for COVID impacted brands, and contributing our bit in reviving the economy.

Even during the tough times, I’m immensely excited to share that we have bagged a strategic investment with the leading consumer intelligence platform – Affle India. This investment reinforces our vision to build the world’s largest Conversation Media Platform. Affle’s strong market position, differentiated business model, and our deep AI-driven tech are setting us together on a long-term growth trajectory.

AR-– Is there any plan to enter new verticals too? What is the roadmap for Bobble AI going forward considering the ever-evolving communications needs?

Yes, we are working towards building a huge Audience Network powered by unique data insights derived from our conversation media platform including real-time contextual intents of our keyboard users. The audience network makes it easy for marketers who seek performance/conversion-driven marketing with highly precise and real-time targeting across all major publishers in India through real-time bidding in our newly introduced Demand Side Platform. This new business unit is meant to cover the entire gamut of the marketing technology ecosystem, helping different enterprises, brands, and agencies in advertisement targeting, campaign management, audience profiling, and more. This is somewhat similar to how Google or Facebook has grown, with its exclusive search and social data respectively.

Bobble AI is amongst the first movers to recognize and act upon the communication needs of India. We are proud to say that in the span of just two months, we have released three regional-language special keyboards including Malayalam, Bangla, and Marathi Keyboards. All these keyboards are widely adopted and appreciated for its variety of regional stickers, GIFS, and emoticons beautifully reflecting the culture and traditions of that region, they provide seamless AI-powered transliteration, autocorrect, and many more features. We are elated by the fact that we are contributing our best in bringing some of the neglected sections into the internet mainstream, now hopefully our regional audience will not feel missed out anymore.

I am immensely excited to share that there are 3 more regional keyboards and 4 new country-specific (Indian subcontinent) keyboard applications that are coming out very soon. These include Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Bahasha, Sinhala, Bangladeshi, & Nepali.

Lastly, as an Innovation company, we understand and are serious about our social responsibility. As a country of 1.3 billion population, we have over 8 million blind and 54 million visually challenged people. We believe that we have an important role to play. Being medically proven visually challenged, I have translated those experiences in the product innovation process, in the form of ‘TalkBack’ mode that provides blind users with spoken feedback while using the keyboard, so that they can efficiently use their smartphones despite compromised vision.