From a New York Trip to Chatbots Spanning Continents

From left: Gergely Kalydi, László Papp, Ákos Deliága, Tamás Szálka.

“We had thought of the idea of chatbots before, but it became a reality in 2016, when managing director Ákos Deliága and chief problem solver Gergely Kalydi met with one of Nasdaq’s heads on a study trip to New York,” the company tells the Budapest Business Journal about its beginnings.  

“During the presentation, they realized what kind of potential chatbots hold, and when Facebook announced it was opening Messenger for chatbots, they immediately began founding the company with head of marketing László Papp and chief technical officer Tamás Szálka.”

Since then, Talk-A-Bot has become the leading chatbot service provider not just in Hungary, but in the region. The company attributes that achievement to its way of thinking, which it says differs from that of their competitors; namely, that chatbots are not for “chatting”.  

“We are planning business solutions for unique business needs, discussions that really contain functions,” Talk-A-Bot’s founders note.  

“We put the greatest emphasis on the UX within the bot, the most effective understanding of users’ intentions, and the highest correct answer ratio. This is how the 99% correct answer ratio among banking clients is born, while the market benchmark hovers around 20%.”  

The company aims at decreasing costs and increasing efficiency via corporate system integration such as webshop, database, SAP, CRM, CMS, and ERP; as well as a language system supporting more than 100 languages and a hybrid chat function.  

“We conduct the marketing of chatbots in-house as well, and the analysis of Big Data information, and the constant development of bots too.”

Serious Market Players

The startup now has some 50 employees, with 30 working on chatbots, from system architecture to testing. The remainder cover the marketing, client relations, sales, and creative roles.

Since its launch, Talk-A-Bot has accumulated a long list of serious market players among its clients, making a name for itself not only in Europe.  

“We have 35 large enterprise clients, with names such as Erste Bank, Heineken, Nestlé, MOL, OTP, NKM National Utilities, and Árkád. Our chatbots have concluded 21 million interactions, with more than three million people using our chatbots,” the company tells the BBJ.  

“We have strategic partners like Rakuten Techstars, Microsoft, and PayPal. In 2018, we participated in Rakuten’s accelerator program in Singapore, gaining a EUR 2 million capital investment, opening our first office in Singapore in January 2019, laying the groundwork for our expansion in Southeast Asia.”

At the end of May, Talk-A-Bot will participate in the South East Europe Tech Tour event. “Our main goal is European and Southeast Asian expansion. For this, we are seeking appropriate partnership agreements, new business. We consider Tech Tour a high-ranking, special event for building relationships, and fortifying our European position,” the startup said, regarding the event.