Squadstack: Transforming the BPO Industry with AI Squadstack has raised a total of about USD 25 million in funding from marquee investors like Chiratae Ventures and Bertelsmann India Investments.

The Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) industry has undergone a tectonic shift from traditional call center operations to an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven approach delivering high-value services to clients. There is a clear transition from voice to value with a conscious obsession towards customer experience (CX).

Squadstack is one of those new-age BPO companies that don't fit into the traditional definition. It uses data and AI at its core to build superior outcomes for its enterprise clients.

"One of the biggest pain points we are addressing for our clients is generating sales leads and drive better conversion…and doing it with 100 per cent data capture," Apurv Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO of Squadstack, told BIZ Experiences India.

Squadstack aims to bring the best of human and AI working in tandem with each other. "The name of our company itself means people plus tech. Squad means people and stack is tech," says Agrawal.

Kanika Jain, Co-founder and Product Head, Squadstack, quirkily says they are somewhat like the Iron Man character. "Anecdotally, Iron Man inspires us as he is also man plus machine and driving and changing the world…even our thesis is how do you enhance a human with all the tech, with all the AI to actually deliver better outcomes for the customers that we have."

Squadstack uses AI to hyper personalize. "Typically, it's one CRM, the same pitch goes to everyone, and there is no personalization. AI helps us to hyper personalize interactions so that we know who to serve when and how. It's about being able to use AI where AI is great, but use human where human is great," says Agrawal.

"It could be a particular escalation scenario or a typical use case where maybe you started off with an AI bot and then quickly you realize that this is beyond the bot's scope and you transfer it to a human," says Jain.

Squadstack has about 11,000 contractual employees working either in a hybrid mode or fully remotely. "It works out really well for homemakers, say for someone who was working in Delhi in an IT company but moved to Ludhiana after marriage and she doesn't have any opportunities. We have people in every zip code and are helping them work like a decentralized call center. It's like an Uber for calling in some level," says Agrawal.

Unlike many of its competitors, Squadstack focuses only on the India market. It plans to expand to other geographies but not immediately. Squadstack counts Angel Broking, Bajaj Broking, HDFC, Bharatpay, Moneyview, Axis Bank, and Eureka Forbes among its clients.

"60 per cent of our clients are in the BFSI sector and 40 per cent of them are in non-BFSI which would include consumer durables (like AC, water purifiers), e-commerce, logistics, education, health, etc." says Agrawal.

Headquartered in Noida, Squadstack has presence across multiple cities in India but entering tier-2 and tier-3 cities is a significant part of their expansion plans. "That's where we feel is more value. People are happier being closer to their homes and it works better for both parties," says Agrawal.

Squadstack has raised a total of about USD 25 million in funding from marquee investors like Chiratae Ventures and Bertelsmann India Investments.