India’s MoEngage bets that the future of marketing is millions of AI agents

Indian customer engagement software firm MoEngage has acquired San Francisco-based startup Aampe in an all-cash deal, betting that AI agents that make decisions for individual customers will become the future of marketing.

MoEngage did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction, but a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the all-cash deal was worth tens of millions of dollars.

Founded in 2020, Aampe develops software that assigns a dedicated AI agent to each customer, allowing brands to personalize messaging based on individual behavior rather than traditional audience segments and campaign rules. The startup has more than 30 customers across the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific, and grew annual recurring revenue by 150% over the past year, MoEngage co-founder and Chief Executive Raviteja Dodda said in an interview.

Dodda told TechCrunch that the acquisition will help it win customers using rival marketing platforms such as Salesforce and Adobe.

“A large part of our growth is driven by migrations of enterprise customers from Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud,” Dodda said.

MoEngage recently signed three to four multi-million-dollar annual contract value deals with customers that switched from Salesforce, Dodda said. He’s hopeful that the Aampe acquisition will help him win more of such customers.

The acquisition comes as software companies race to embed AI deeper into enterprise applications, moving beyond tools that generate content or assist employees towards agents making autonomous decisions. In marketing, that includes deciding which customers to target, what messages to send, and when to send them.

Aampe’s technology is used by brands including Swiggy, Grab, and Taxfix, some of which also use MoEngage’s customer engagement platform.

The acquisition comes over six months after MoEngage raised $280 million through a mix of primary and secondary transactions. Around 20 Aampe employees will join MoEngage, taking the company’s workforce to roughly 820 people.

Founded in 2020, Aampe has raised about $28 million across three funding rounds. The startup counts Peak XV Partners, Z47, and Theory Ventures among its investors.

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