NEW DELHI: All the clamour around artificial intelligence (AI) posing a threat to our jobs seem to be getting real and AI is finally coming for them.

Bengaluru-based startup Dukaan which laid off 90% of its customer support team or some 23 employees in September last year has replaced the functions of the department with an AI chatbot.

Founder - CEO Suumit Shah claims that the startup’s customer support costs reduced by 85% due to the move.

“Whatever I used to spend in terms of the salaries for the customer support staff are not required anymore,” Shah told TOI.

The chatbot Lina, powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT can resolve queries in minutes.

“Time to first response went from 1 minute 44 seconds to instant.

Resolution time went from 2 hours 13 minutes to 3 minutes 12 seconds,” Shah said in a Twitter post.The company has retained only two to three customer support executives.

“The ideal customer support profile for Dukaan at least would be someone who has the understanding of e-commerce, technology, product and communication.

That is something which we can’t find in the market.

And even if we find someone with all the skill sets, they wouldn’t want to work as a customer support executive,” said Shah, adding that the lack of adequately equipped customer support executives required him to respond to customer queries.

Besides the challenge in finding the right talent, reducing employee count also helps in reining in costs and nudged by investors, startups have been striving to check expenses and demonstrate a path to profitability.

Dukaan which helps businesses set up online stores and scale their ventures is aiming to achieve profitability in the next two to three months, Shah said.

In all, the company undertook two rounds of layoffs since September.Shah said that AI has the potential to replace jobs in the graphic designing, illustration and data science domains.

“It will typically take five to ten days’ time to create a high quality illustration.

That can be done in five seconds by AI.

While data analytics can be done using technology at as low a price as $20,” Shah added.