Mihir Shukla (on l) and Ankur Kothari

One of India’s premier business newspapers, Economic Times, recently profiled Automation Anywhere, a tech start-up that is now “one of the superstars of robotic process automation (RPA).

Three of the four founding members –Mihir Shukla, Ankur Kothari, and Neeti Mehta – have roots in Palanpur .
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We reproduce the article for the benefit of PO members.

A unicorn you haven’t heard of is changing India’s tech business (OR Bot, Off the Shelf)

Automation Anywhere, founded by four Indians and backed by blue-chip investors, has quietly emerged as one of the superstars of robotic process automation. Its playbook offers a peek into what a globally competitive Indian-origin multinational might look like in the AI-led digital era.

By Malini Goyal
ET, June 13

Automation Anywhere (AA) doesn’t easily ring a bell. 
 

In India’s startup world, where entrepreneurs turn superstars overnight, the founders of AA — a robotic process automation (RPA) firm that makes software bots to automate business processes — aren’t household names. Yet, the 15-year-old company, started by four Indians with roots in Vadodara and headquarters in California, has been grabbing headlines and raking in profits with robotic consistency. 
 

AA is counted among the hottest and fastest-growing companies leading the RPA wave globally. It has not just grown rapidly — in triple digits — but has recorded profits for the last seven years-plus. Not surprisingly, investors have lined up with top dollar. 
 

Last year, AA’s Series A fundraise of USD550 million from big-bulge investors counted among the top 10 venture rounds in the US. Bootstrapped until then, the company’s valuation has been surging. In July, it raised USD250 million from investors like New Enterprise Associates and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, valuing it at USD1.8 billion. In November, it landed another USD300 million from SoftBank Vision Fund at a valuation of USD2.8 billion. 
 

“We had an amazing story to tell. We have fantastic top-tier investors. We are a little spoilt for choices,” says Ankur Kothari, who co-founded the company with Mihir Shukla, Neeti Mehta, and Rushabh Parmani. 
 

Endorsements have come thick and fast. “[With AA’s offering] anyone can build a bot. Its ease of use enables business users to deploy RPA solutions without having to rely on their IT departments,” says Peter Munzig, managing director, General Atlantic. 
 

Despite the impressive credentials, Kothari isn’t quite used to media glare. At the business centre in Mumbai’s The Grand Hotel, even as he reluctantly poses for a profile shot, he requests if we could avoid using his picture. “I am a hardcore engineer. A techie,” he laughs. “My wife is going to rib me on this one.” 
 

For multiple reasons, Kothari and AA’s journey deserves attention. Of course, the startup’s stellar growth is a compelling story in itself. But beyond the numbers, the AA founders’ rise marks the arrival of a new breed of Indian software-as-a-service (SaaS) entrepreneurs on the global stage. (Even though Kothari left India in the 1990s right after college, he identifies himself as an Indian entrepreneur and has kept his India links alive). 
 

High on confidence and ambitions, these entrepreneurs often straddle two worlds. Tapping into their Indian roots while leveraging their Silicon Valley networks, they are making the most of the two geographies to build globally competitive businesses for the digital era. In doing so, they are moving beyond the labour-cost arbitrage model that helped build the earlier wave of IT outsourcing giants like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro. 
 

More important, as startups like AA expand their global footprint, their organisational construct offers a peek into what a globally competitive Indian MNC might look like in the AI-led digital era. 
 

The digital-worker factory

“The product-company mindset is very different from the services mindset. In the latter, customers tell you what to do. In the former, you have to be a disruptor and tell customers what to do,” says Milan Sheth, executive vice-president (IMEA and RoW), AA Digital Workforce. 
 

What exactly does AA’s tribe do? In one sentence, it is cheerleading the era of invisible bots or digital workers — intelligent assistants that can automate specific job roles by thinking, analysing, and acting the way humans do. Think of them as software robots that can handle high-volume, repeatable tasks such as preparing reports and reconciling records like monthly sales, expenses, inventory status, and medical records. 
 

“As companies transition from legacy software to modern software, different systems within an organisation continue to operate in silos and talk to each other only through people,” says Kothari. “We looked at the problem and wanted to ask if we could develop a way where software could mimic human behaviour. It was a problem we fell in love with.” 
 

While automation and digitisation has been happening for some time, what is different about the likes of AA and their robots is that bit about mimicking human behaviour. 

Consider for example Melbourne University, an AA customer that gets thousands of applications every year. AA’s bots have not only helped it automate the application process but also generate valuable analytics and insights. “They now know their students much better,” says Kothari. With the knowledge of student demography, background, popular courses, dropouts, etc., “the university is now working on improving its entire experience. Scaling too is so easy with it,” he says. 
 

“Its ‘IQ Bot’ layers in AI and machine learning for more complex decision-based tasks,” adds General Atlantic’s Munzig. 
 

RPA is today a USD50 billion addressable opportunity. Consulting firm Zinnov estimates enterprises to have spent USD2.3 billion in FY19, a figure that is likely to grow to over USD11 billion by FY24, making it one of the fastest-growing enterprise software plays globally. 
 

Last year, AA rolled out its bot store. It is like an app store, where one can pick pre-built bots or digital assistants with specific profiles or personas. Say you are an HR head. Besides HR-automation software, you can also download bots like Digital Recruiter (helps with vetting résumés and recruiting) or Digital Sourcer (crawls the Web, including platforms like LinkedIn, to source relevant résumés). 
 

With partners like KPMG and Deloitte, AA now has over 500 bots in its bot store. “I was blown away by their conviction and confidence that world-class software products can come out of India,” says Sheth, who quit his E&Y job to join AA. 
 

Will AA’s bots bring the threat of robots taking away human jobs closer to reality? Last year, AA created 1 million digital workers and has plans to grow it to 3 million by 2020. But Kothari expectedly dismisses the job-loss fear. “The fear of automation is extremely overblown. These robots will take out the repetitive tasks, making the work more human,” he says. 
 

View from Silicon Valley

What does it take to lead the charge in a cutting-edge technology like AI? Having a base in Silicon Valley helps. 

 

Says Kothari: “Its environment allows you to think big and global from day one and scale fast.” Shukla, who is based in California, adds: “Within a small radius in Silicon Valley, you get so many software companies and some of the world’s best talent. Failure is celebrated here. We now see the same happening in Bengaluru.” 
 

According to Shukla, the Silicon Valley advantage is that you can see ahead and get an early sense of where the world is headed. 

The co-founders’ experiences in product companies also help. Shukla, for example, has worked with pioneering product companies like Netscape in the US. “In that environment, you learn many things like managing fast growth. I can apply those learnings here.” 

One key lesson? For any technology or product like the Internet or personal computer, the way to make an impact is to ensure that it works for big and small users (from developers to users to companies), be available on all kinds of devices, and be a global company but locally optimised. So, AA’s product is available in eight languages and can process data in 190 languages.