Wipro to invest in US-based artificial intelligence startup Avaamo

Wipro Ltd said on Thursday it has picked up a minority stake in US-based artificial intelligence startup Avaamo Inc.

The company has invested $2.02 million through a fresh infusion of funds into Avaamo, it said in a stock-exchange filing. It will also make additional investment through conversion of convertible notes issued earlier, taking the total investment to $3.02 million.

This would give Wipro a stake of less than 20% on a fully diluted basis, India's third-largest software services exporter said.

Avaamo is an early-stage company founded in 2014. Headquartered in Los Altos, USA, Avaamo provides an AI-driven enterprise bot platform that reduces the time needed to design and deploy enterprise bots to corporate employees and their customers.

The tech giant, through its investment arm Wipro Ventures, has invested in several early to mid-stage startups working on emerging technologies in India, Israel and the US. It typically puts in between $1 million and $10 million in a single round, depending on the stage of the investment.

It looks to invest in areas such as fin-tech, healthcare IT and the broad enterprise software sector with a focus on domains such as AI, big data and analytics, cloud infrastructure, Internet of Things, and security, according to information available on its website.

In November, it invested an undisclosed sum in California-based app testing platform HeadSpin Inc.

It has also invested in Pune-based Altizon Systems Pvt. Ltd, which operates a technology platform for developing industrial IoT solutions, US-based cybersecurity company Vectra Networks, robotics startup Vicarious, and risk and fraud prevention firm Emailage Corporation.

Avaamo, which has an office in Bengaluru, was founded by Ram Menon and Sriram Chakravarthy. Menon is the startup's CEO while Chakravarthy is the CTO. Both previously worked at TIBCO Software Inc. Menon has also worked at Accenture.