After 15 years of being in the industry and curating some of the best products in robotic automation space, when this California-based RPA company raised $250 million in a fundraising round, it gained major traction for all the right reasons. This was the first ever funding that the company has raised in 15 years and secondly, it set total valuation of the company at a whopping $1.8 billion!

What Is Automation Anywhere?

Providing a platform to organisations to build world-class intelligent digital workforces, Automation Anywhere’s enterprise-grade platform uses software bots that work alongside people to do much of the repetitive work in many industries. By combining sophisticated technologies such as RPA, cognitive and embedded analytic technologies, it has enabled more than 1000 organisations with its AI solutions, thereby reducing operational costs, decreasing error rates, and scaling the business faster.

So far, it has led automation requirements of industries such as financial services, insurance, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, telecom and logistics companies globally.

What It Intends To Do Now With Its $1 Billion Evaluation?

The Series A funding that brought Automation Anywhere’s post-money valuation to $1.8 billion was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity with participation from General Atlantic and World Innovation Lab (WiL). As the company’s page notes, with this sizeable investment, it aims to expand the RPA market and accelerate its global engagements significantly.

It also plans to invest and deepen its customer engagements in countries such as North America, LATAM, India, Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. The company would also work on enhancing its machine learning capabilities and sophisticated AI integrations to drive higher operational efficiency, increased agility and flexibility to scale up-and-down anytime, all with robust security. The company also aims to increase the percentage of automation in an enterprise business to 80 percent, which has till not been 20 percent with traditional automation technologies.

“Our investors recognise the enormous RPA market potential, and our Series A financing at a $1.8 billion valuation is an acknowledgement of the company’s strong leadership, stability and growth prospects,” Mihir Shukla, CEO and Co-Founder of Automation Anywhere shared on the company’s blog post.

Clyde Hosein, CFO of Automation Anywhere shared that with this investment they are poised to extend their leadership in the multibillion-dollar RPA market. “We welcome the new investor group and look forward to their valuable contributions as we enter our next growth phase,” he had said.

How Has RPA Industry Evolved Over The Years?

A report by McKinsey Global Institute suggests that by 2030, 75 million workers around the globe will need to change occupational category due to automation, and 400 million individuals could be potentially displaced and need to find new jobs. These estimates are based on a midpoint rate of adoption of automation. While some jobs are entirely going to be replaced by automation, whereas several others would change into entirely new job categories.

Despite these numbers, RPA is picking up fast to automate business processes that have never been automated by traditional technology platforms. Companies like Automation Anywhere has demonstrated tremendous progress within the RPA landscape and aims to deliver greater results. While Automation Anywhere has a lot of things planned out to utilise the money, this move may prove to be a turning point for the automation industry. Where most experts are still debating on the repercussions of automating tasks and jobs, the founders of the company see it as a point where automation has reached an inflection point. The company argues that as the consumers are demanding faster service than ever, the demand for automation is picking up to compete with the fast paced developments that business are witnessing.

Calling it a pivotal moment in the history of technology, Mihir Shukla, Founder and CEO of Automation Anywhere had shared in an interview that automation will not replace jobs but augment it. Just the way we witnessed changes when computers came to being, robots and automation are going to bring changes in the way people function, whilst augmenting the workforce and introducing higher productivity.

The company estimates that currently there are certain kinds of tasks that hundreds of humans are performing manually which can be easily and efficiently carried out by robots. These tasks are moving data from one screen to another, data collection, data verification, invoice processioning among others.

The company believes that automating these tasks would free human professionals from mundane tasks and focus on more complex tasks such as creative thinking, management and others.

Scenario In India

Given its lead in the IT industry, India is particularly ahead in the RPA game. Other factors such as large and diverse talent pool, and cost effective labour favours the growth. Even the captives of global companies are veering towards it. Some of the early adopters of RPA in India have been financial services, telecom and the healthcare sectors.

Experts are of a view that nearly two lakh RPA-led jobs are expected to be generated in the country by 2021. It would not only provide an employment opportunity but help build India’s middle class.

The Future Skills platform unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi also aims at up-skilling two million technology professionals in the areas of RPA, AI, virtual reality, Internet of Things, big data analytics, 3D printing, cloud computing, and others.