MakeMyTrip Ltd, India’s biggest online travel-booking service has announced the roll out of an AI (artificial intelligence) voice chat service.
It will start off with availability in English and Hindi and will appear on the app and the front page of the travel site. It is designed as a way to help users book flights and holidays.
MakeMyTrip is planning to expand beyond the 75 million users in India, targeting hundreds of millions of new customers. India’s middle-class includes consumers who aren’t fluent in English or comfortable using technology.
Rajesh Magow, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer has said, “The next phase of MakeMyTrip’s growth will come from India’s 100 million e-commerce users who prefer to engage in their own language and via voice. We have to bridge the gap.”
They also plan to add additional Indian languages within the app. An AI voice trial recently took place in the Bhojpuri language which is native parts of northern India.
The AI option shared airline information, flight dates, timings and pricing. After a trip has been chosen, the user receives a QR code to help with completing a payment.
This service will use a combination of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 systems that were developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI.
India has 800 million internet and 600 million smartphone users, however only has approximately 150 million who make purchases online and high-frequency transactors are about half of that.
There are 22 official languages in India, and most of the 1.4 billion population are not comfortable typing or using English language app and websites.
“We want to use the voice bot to reach a new set of users from India’s smallest cities and towns,” Magow said. “But adoption will take time.”
