Who is Suumit Shah, Dukaan founder who fired 90% of support staff for AI chatbot?

Bengaluru-based startup Dukaan has fired 90 per cent of its customer support team. It has replaced them with an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. The decision was announced by Dukaan founder and CEO Suumit Shah on Twitter. 

Attributing the decision to prioritise profitability, he said customer support costs reduced by 85 per cent while resolution time went down from over two hours to three minutes. Shah has been criticised for its decision. However, Shah also announced that the company is hiring for multiple roles.

Who is Suumit Shah? 

He is the co-founder and CEO of Dukaan, a DIY platform which allows merchants and retailers even those with zero programming skills to set up their e-commerce store. Shah launched Dukaan in June 2020 with Subhash Choudhary, co-founder and CTO of the company.

Before Dukaan, Shah founded Rankz.io and Risemetric in 2018 and 2014, respectively. Shah is an entrepreneur and a product designer. He belongs to  Mumbai. He holds a degree in engineering. After learning major courses online, Suumit worked with various big corporations including Mcdonald’s and Cred, as per reports.

He has also worked with Housing.com and TinyOwl as Digital Marketing Manager. Suumit then went on to start his own business called Risemetric, along with his friend Subhash. After four years, he founded Rankz.io in 2018.

But now, after firing its 90% support staff team, he is being criticised on social media. "We had to lay off 90 per cent of our support team because of this AI chatbot. Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely," Shah tweeted.

We had to layoff 90% of our support team because of this AI chatbot.

Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.

The results?

Time to first response went from 1m 44s to INSTANT!
Resolution time went from 2h 13m to 3m 12s
Customer support costs reduced by ~85%

Here's how's we did it 

— Suumit Shah (@suumitshah) July 10, 2023

He explained in detail about Lina, the AI assistant which he claimed, replaces generic and delayed responses, as well as limited availability of resources and poor communication. After 12 tweets, Shah said that the company is hiring for multiple roles. When asked by a Twitter user about the assistance provided to the laid off staff, he asked them to look out for his LinkedIn post, reiterating that it was a tough decision.

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