{"id":23959,"date":"2021-04-21T05:18:01","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T05:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/laiye-chinas-answer-to-uipath-closes-50-million-series-c.html"},"modified":"2021-04-21T05:18:01","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T05:18:01","slug":"laiye-chinas-answer-to-uipath-closes-50-million-series-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/laiye-chinas-answer-to-uipath-closes-50-million-series-c.html","title":{"rendered":"Laiye, China\u2019s answer to UiPath, closes $50 million Series C+"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robotic process automation has become buzzy<\/a> in the last few months. New York-based UiPath is on course to launch an initial public offering<\/a> after gaining an astounding valuation of $35 billion<\/a> in February. Over in China, homegrown RPA startup Laiye is making waves as well.<\/p>\n

Laiye, which develops software to mimic mundane workplace tasks like keyboard strokes and mouse clicks, announced it has raised $50 million in a Series C+ round. The proceeds came about a year after<\/a> the Beijing-based company pulled in the first tranche of its Series C round.<\/p>\n

Laiye, six years old and led by Baidu veterans, has raised over $130 million<\/a> to date according to public information.<\/p>\n

Leading investors in the Series C+ round were Ping\u00a0An Global Voyager Fund<\/a>, an early-stage strategic investment vehicle of Chinese financial conglomerate Ping An, and Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry Equity Investment Fund<\/a>, a government-backed fund. Other participants included\u00a0Lightspeed China Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia China and Wu Capital.<\/p>\n

RPA tools are attracting companies looking for ways to automate workflows during COVID-19, which has disrupted office collaboration. But the enterprise tech was already gaining traction prior to the pandemic. As my colleague, Ron Miller wrote<\/a> this month on the heels of UiPath\u2019s S1 filing:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe category was gaining in popularity by that point because it addressed automation in a legacy context. That meant companies with deep legacy technology \u2014 practically everyone not born in the cloud \u2014 could automate across older platforms without ripping and replacing, an expensive and risky undertaking that most CEOs would rather not take.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one case, Laiye\u2019s RPA software helped the social security workers<\/a> in the city of Lanzhou speed up their account reconciliation process by 75%; in the past, they would have to type in pensioners\u2019 information and check manually whether the details were correct.<\/p>\n

In another instance, Laiye\u2019s chatbot helped automate the national population census in several southern Chinese cities, freeing census takers from visiting households door-to-door.<\/p>\n

Laiye said its RPA enterprise business achieved positive cash flow and its chatbot business turned profitability in the fourth quarter of 2020. Its free-to-use edition<\/a> has amassed over 400,000 developers, and the company also runs a bot marketplace<\/a> connecting freelance developers to small-time businesses with automation needs.<\/p>\n

Laiye is expanding its services globally and boasts that its footprint now spams Asia, the United States and Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cLaiye aims to foster the world\u2019s largest developer community for software robots and built the world\u2019s largest bot marketplace in the next three years, and we plan to certify at least one million software robot developers by 2025,\u201d said Wang Guanchun, chair and CEO of Laiye.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that digital workforce and intelligent automation will reach all walks of life as long as more human workers can be up-skilled with knowledge in RPA and AI\u201d.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/b9m28Zp04ig\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robotic process automation has become buzzy in the last few months. New York-based UiPath is on course to launch an initial public offering after gaining an astounding valuation of $35 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-23959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t