For many years, Fortune 500 corporations needed to rent market analysis corporations to get significant insights into buyer satisfaction. These providers include a hefty price ticket and infrequently take weeks to finish.
Keplar, a market analysis startup, makes use of voice AI to conduct buyer interviews, offering purchasers with evaluation a lot quicker and at a fraction of the price of conventional analysis consulting corporations. On Wednesday, the two-year-old firm introduced that it raised $3.4 million in seed funding led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from SV Angel, Widespread Steel, and South Park Commons.
The thought for Keplar was conceived in 2023 when Dhruv Guliani (above proper), beforehand an engineer at Google, the place he labored on speech and voice AI fashions, and machine studying engineer William Wen, participated within the South Park Commons founder fellowship program.
The duo spoke with market researchers and model managers and realized that the instruments these professionals depend on — written surveys and interviews performed by people — can now get replaced by conversational AI.
With Keplar, corporations can arrange research in minutes, Guliani instructed TechCrunch. The startup’s platform can flip any query in regards to the product into an interview moderation information. Keplar’s voice assistant will then attain out to contributors and can ask them probing questions to grasp what prospects like and dislike in regards to the product.
If Keplar is granted entry to the consumer’s CRM, the AI voice researcher will attain out to present prospects. The outcomes of AI conversations are then packaged into studies and PowerPoint shows, just like these historically offered by human market researchers.
Counting on voice bots earlier than developments in LLMs wouldn’t have been potential. However voice AI has change into so good that research contributors generally neglect they’re talking to AI, Guliani mentioned.
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“These conversations really feel actually actual. If you play every little thing again, you may even hear contributors handle the AI moderator by identify: Ellie, Andrew or Ryan.”
The startup’s prospects embody Clorox and Intercom.
Keplar isn’t the one AI firm making an attempt to disrupt the shopper analysis market. Bigger rivals embody Outset, which raised a $17 million Sequence A led by 8VC in June, and Pay attention Labs, which raised $27 million from Sequoia in April.
