Automation Anywhere to Invest $100 Million in India

Robotic process automation player to expand R&D centres.

Automation Anywhere, a global leader in robotic process automation (RPA), has committed to invest $100 million in India in the next 3-5 years. The investments will go towards expanding its R&D centres, creating an ecosystem to build a digital workforce and enable its partners worldwide.

The SoftBank-backed company that was valued at $2.6 billion during its fund-raise of $300 million last year, plans to open four new offices in Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune to support customer and partner growth, while continuing to strengthen its presence in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Vadodara. At present, the company has three engineering centres – two in Bengaluru and one in Baroda. A new product engineering centre in Pune is on the anvil.

Mihir Shukla, CEO and Co-founder, Automation Anywhere

RPA is a fast-evolving technology which uses software robots (bots) to automate business processes that have never been automated by traditional technology platforms. Today, these processes are managed manually by hundreds of thousands of human workers.

Automation Anywhere’s Intelligent Digital Workforce Platform combines cognitive automation and analytics to drive productivity and business process accuracy.

Software bots.

“We are the fastest growing company in our category and have experienced a 200 per cent growth rate YoY in IMEA (India, Middle East, Africa). Our enterprise-grade platform that combines RPA, cognitive and embedded analytic technologies, uses software bots that work side by side with people to do much of the repetitive work across industries. Globally, we have deployed 1.4 million software bots and plan to deploy over three million software bots by 2020,” said Mihir Shukla, co-founder and CEO, Automation Anywhere.

He said the company’s global customer roster of 3,000 plus customers in 120 countries includes 90 per cent of the world’s top healthcare companies, 85 per cent of the world’s top technology companies, more than 85 per cent of the world’s top banks and financial services companies and 80 per cent of the world’s top telecommunications companies.

Gartner estimates that by 2021, 90 per cent of the large and mid-size organisations will have at least one process supported by RPA. According to equity research firm KeyBanc Capital Markets, RPA has emerged as a $100-billion market opportunity.

“As organisations seek to lower operating costs and improve employee productivity with RPA, India possesses a tremendous business opportunity for our company. Over the next, we anticipate deploying over one million bots across India and Middle East to help companies discover, deploy and scale RPA to drive extraordinary human potential,” said Ankur Kothari, co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer, Automation Anywhere. Interestingly, India is second to the US in revenue contribution for the company.

The San Jose-headquartered firm with 42 offices around the world will end 2019 with 3,000 plus employees worldwide and an additional 300 digital bot workforce. “We see India emerging as the automation hub of the world in the near future. This is a huge opportunity for India much like China is the manufacturing hub of the world,” said Shukla.

Source: www.thehindubusinessline.com