TL;DR Breakdown
- Coinbse acquires Agara, an Indian tech startup.
- Coinbase exchange to use acquisition expand and improve its customer service operation.
Number one American crypto firm Coinbase Exchange has acquired an Indian AI firm to help it expand and also improve its customer support service.
On Tuesday, the American crypto exchange firm announced that it had acquired Agara, an artificial intelligence-enabled support platform with operations in India and the United States.
Coinbase exchange aims to use the acquisition expand and also automate its customer support service capabilities by providing new machine learning and natural language processing tools to Coinbase’s engineering team. It also helps Coinbase achieve its goal of expenditure tech-hub in India.
Coinbase exchange spent around $40 million and $50 million to acquire the Indian startup, TechCrunch reported on Monday, citing anonymous sources. The two firms reportedly expect to close the deal before the end of the year.
Coinbase exchange acquisition, a win-win – Agara co-founder
One of the co-founders of the Indian startup Gupta has described the takeover of his firm as a win-win deal for both Coinbase exchange and Agara. “It’s amazing to see my worlds collide here with Agara, a startup I co-founded in early 2017 but later left to join Google,” Gupta said.
Pankaj Gupta, Coinbase’s head of operations in India, said Agara’s tech team will joinCoinbase as part of the acquisition.
Agara, for many years, worked on machine learning and natural language processing to improve user experience. Employing around 40 people, Agara has reportedly managed to amass some large customers, including cloud-based software company Salesforce and major e-commerce company Shopify.
Coinbase and its many customer support challenges
One primary challenge Coinbase exchange faces is its bad customer support system. Despite a review of thousands of complaints revealing a pattern of account takeovers, users see money suddenly vanish from their account, followed by poor customer service from Coinbase that makes users feel left hanging and angry.
Since 2016, CNBC revealed that Coinbase users have filed more than 11,000 complaints against Coinbase with the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, mostly related to customer service.
Its acquisition is a boost and significant step towards solving its myriad of customer support challenges.
