DRUID ends the first half of 2020 with a revenue increase of 349%, more than four times higher than the same period last year. Attracting new customers and launching new AI chatbot based virtual assistants for existing clients, led to a 304% increase in monthly recurring license revenue (MRR) compared to the recurring revenue in the same period in 2019.
Following the high demand for chatbot virtual assistants generated by the COVID-19 crisis, the company has revised its recurrent licensing revenues with an estimated 560% increase by the end of 2020. Conversational AI automation implementation services generate five times more value for the network of implementation partners.
In the revenue structure, the main contribution was made by implementing chatbots for financial services sector (banks, insurance companies, financial and operational leasing), which generated 49% of the revenue, while conversational AI projects for healthcare
contributed 25%, retail with 15%, while the remaining 11% went to other industries, mainly services, and utilities.
Among the companies that joined the DRUID client portfolio in the first half of 2020 are BRD Societe Generale, Garanti Bank, Libra Bank, Idea Bank, Alpha Bank, OTP Bank, OTP Leasing, Groupama Asigurări, Provident, Orange Romania, Orange Moldova, Carrefour, Cărtureşti, Altex, Profi, FAN Courier, Cora. Also, several existing customers have decided to expand their internal teams of virtual assistants, launching new AI chatbots to automate various other processes. Among them, Banca Transilvania, Regina Maria, Asirom, Servier Pharma, eON, Dona, Orange, and Provident are continually developing their chatbots built on DRUID technology, to automate new business workflows.
The COVID-19 crisis and the imposed distancing measures determined the company to quickly change its product strategy, to help the local business environment with solutions that contribute to digital transformation efforts of both customer relations and maintain employee productivity in working from home scenarios. For remote document signing, DRUID has partnered with Namirial and CertSign, providers of simple, advanced, or qualified electronic signature. Thus, companies were able to continue signing documents through chatbots, in any scenario – at the point of sale, at the point of service, employees working remotely or from home.
To enable commercial and credit risk analysis features, the DRUID platform has been integrated with KeysFin, one of the most important credit risk management and business information solution providers in Romania. For digital enrollment solutions for customers and employees, DRUID has signed a technology partnership with Tremend. The technological integration partnerships with Vonage and SDL have enabled DRUID chatbots to communicate via WhatsApp, fully compliant with GDPR regulations, but also enabled real-time translation of user conversations in over 100 languages. Moreover, by integrating with UiPath robots, DRUID has enabled end-to-end business process automation solutions with a conversational AI layer, such as managing requests to defer bank loan installments, relieving financial services customer support centers of repetitive tasks and providing customers with quick resolutions to their requests.
In June, DRUID signed a global agreement with UiPath, the leader in robotic business process automation (RPA), through which UiPath integrated DRUID’s conversational AI features into the world’s first hyper-automation platform. Thus, UiPath offers their clients and implementation partners the best performing digital automation experience through pre-configured chatbots for industries, roles, and processes.
DRUID actively collaborates with major consulting companies, which have added skills in the configuration and development of chatbots on DRUID technology to their RPA centers of excellence. In addition to alliances with EY, PWC, Deloitte, and KPMG, DRUID has greatly expanded its partner ecosystem. In the first six months, 18 new contracts were signed with several implementation partners, system integrators, and automation solution providers, including Inform Lykos, Asseco, Tremend, Trend Consult, Encorsa, Future Work Force, Future Decoded, RPA Box, Matricia, Enterprise Concept or Neurony.
Following its global partnership with UiPath, DRUID has begun international expansion by developing a global partner ecosystem. Thus, 12 strategic partnerships were signed with automation solution providers, including Microelectronic (Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific), Enterprise RPA and Tquila Automation (UK), Kognetic (UAE), Element Blue and Confiance Group (USA). International development will continue in the second half of the year with the launch of operations in the United States.
“We have just positioned ourselves on a hypergrowth trajectory. We aim to increase our recurring revenue by more than 6 times compared to last year. With the launch of operations in the United States, I expect to quickly strengthen the domestic structure and accelerate international expansion by attracting new rounds of financing”, stated Liviu Drăgan, DRUID’s CEO.
In the next five years, DRUID (www.druidai.com) aims to become a leader in the conversational AI solutions global market. This market is estimated to grow from $4.2 BLN in 2019 to $15.7 BLN by 2024, with an average growth rate of 30.2%.
Conversational AI solutions are based on technologies that facilitate the interaction between humans and computer systems. These solutions combine in a single platform, technologies and tools necessary for developing intelligent virtual assistants. AI chatbot virtual assistants’ role is to take repetitive, time-consuming activities off of people’s shoulders and support them in quickly accessing existing but often scattered data across multiple enterprise systems. Modern technologies enable fast training of chatbots for various business roles, any industry.