Silicon Valley-Based Team Will Expand Liveperson’s Bot Ecosystem and Accelerate the Delivery of Advanced Conversational AI to More of the World’s Largest Brands

LivePerson, Inc., the global leader in conversational commerce, announced that the founding team at innovative conversational AI startup BotCentral, including CEO and noted Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur Eswar Priyadarshan, has joined LivePerson.

Priyadarshan will lead the conversational design group at LivePerson, driving the adoption of conversational AI at the world’s leading brands. A successful serial entrepreneur, he has in the past reported to Steve Jobs, while launching the iAd network, after Apple’s acquisition of Quattro Mobile, where he was co-founder and CTO. Priyadarshan also co-founded mobile messaging leader m-Qube, and, earlier in his career, at Adobe, he pioneered in-browser PDF technology.

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At LivePerson, Priyadarshan will continue to work on conversational design alongside his former BotCentral team, including co-founders and long-time collaborators at Quattro Mobile and Apple, Ravi Chittari, VP of engineering, and Jon Altschuler, VP of creative development.

“I’m delighted to welcome Eswar, Ravi, Jon and the team to LivePerson, to build out our bot ecosystem and extend our lead as the world’s best open platform for orchestrating multiple bots and human agents at scale. We’re seeing the world’s largest brands shift rapidly to conversational commerce, and only LivePerson has the platform, expertise, tools, and partner network to do this at scale,” says Robert LoCascio, founder and CEO of LivePerson.

An active partner in the LiveEngage for Bots platform announced last year, which, uniquely in the industry, allows brands to “mix and match” third-party bots according to their business needs, BotCentral’s technology will strengthen this platform, and support LivePerson’s strategy of working with multiple bot partners, enabling brands to create the ideal blend of AI and human interactions.

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Says Eswar Priyadarshan, “There’s such a huge opportunity ahead of us, as the world moves to conversational commerce. LivePerson’s conversational platform is ideally suited to manage AI and humans together to deliver augmented AI conversational solutions at scale. Having collaborated as partners, we could see how combining our expertise in AI and conversational design with the LiveEngage open platform, bot ecosystem and customer base of leading brands would be a very powerful proposition.”

While an active participant in the LiveEngage for Bots partner program, the BotCentral team created a number of bot solutions for major brands in banking, insurance, and travel, running on LivePerson’s conversational platform. With the team’s expertise and knowledge of the LiveEngage platform, the team will bring valuable insight for LivePerson’s customers and partners, and enable the company to more rapidly optimize its bot deployment capabilities, and grow the ecosystem.

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