Freshworks acquires chatbot startup Joe Hukum

Freshworks, formerly known as Freshdesk has acquired Joe Hukum, a platform that helps businesses build their own chatbots, the company announced on Thursday. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Joe Hukum was founded in July 2015 by Arihant Jain, Ajeet Kushwaha, and Rahul Agarwal, who have previously worked with healthcare startups, HealthKart and 1mg. The firm’s technology automates sales, service and support workflows across various channels and user interfaces.

The chatbot startup, earlier known as Speedy, originally worked on building its own personal assistant/concierge app to help people order goods and services before pivoting to present the service as a platform for building bots for other businesses. The Joe Hukum team will now be responsible for building bots on top of existing Freshworks products, enabling workflow automation for demand generation, knowledge management, and dynamic in-app self-service.

This is Freshworks’ eighth acquisition in two years, and the third one in the area of artificial intelligence, specifically “neuro-linguistic programming.” The other two acquisitions were of Chatimity and Frilp. Freshworks said it will use the tech and talent from the three startups to launch chatbot-powered solutions.

“We are seeing strong interest from our customers on how they want to leverage chatbots as they are looking for new ways to engage with customers on their web and mobile channels,” said Girish Mathrubootham, founder and chief executive of Freshworks, in a statement.

Founded in October 2010, Freshworks is backed by Accel Partners, Tiger Global Management, CapitalG, and Sequoia Capital India. The company currently has around 100,000 companies using Freshdesk, giving it a decent base from which to start selling new services like these bots.