Freshworks acquires Joe Hukum, the chatbot startup

Freshworks, the Chennai- and San Bruno-based provider of cloud-based business software, has acquired Joe Hukum, a platform that enables businesses to build their own chatbots. The chatbox startup was founded by Arihant Jain, Ajeet Kushwaha and Rahul Agarwal, cofounders of healthcare startups HealthKart and 1mg, in 2015. This is Freshworks’ 8th acquisition since its inception, after it acquired Chatimity and Frilp, which are enhancing neuro-linguistic programming-based artificial intelligence capabilities. Girish Mathrubootham, founder of Freshworks, said that “As customer preferences shift from traditional phone tree-based call center support, chatbots offer a new support experience, while solving the age-old challenge of triaging customer inquiries and routing that to the right support agent”.

Joe Kukum’s engineering team will be responsible for building bots on top of existing Freshworks products, enabling workflow automations for demand generation, knowledge management and dynamic in-app self-service. The startup’s technology is powered by a robust framework that automates sales, service and support workflows, across various channels and user interfaces.

Freshdesk recently rebranded itself into Freshworks and other entities to have a lean and work-specific structure. It is on an acquisition spree in a bid to grow inorganically and venture into newer technologies.