Kore.ai, a leader in Generative AI and enterprise conversational platform technology, announces Celso Ferraz do Amaral as the new Director of Sales & Partnerships for Brazil and southern Latin America, including Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay. The new executive arrives with the goal of defining and implementing sales strategies, being closer to customers, and establishing relationships with strategic partners for the company.
For Amaral, expanding artificial intelligence (AI) services and strengthening partnerships are among the main focuses of his work in the company. "I have very high expectations for applying Generative AI to our clients' business processes, focusing on the financial services, retail, and communications sectors, which are target areas for Kore.ai in the region. Additionally, we will work very hard with partnerships, expanding both local partners and Global System Integrators – GSIs, training them to integrate Kore.ai platform solutions into our clients' business processes," comments the new commercial director of Kore.ai.
Amaral is coming from Onfly, a corporate travel startup based on SaaS technology, but with his vast experience in the market and specializations, the executive has already worked for other major players in the market, such as IBM, Avaya, SAP and Zendesk, where in three years he reached 75 clients in Latin America, with conversational solutions integrated with WhatsApp, and the project started from scratch.
The growth of partnerships in southern Latin America will be one of the executive's focuses. For Amaral, it is essential to have three to four partners per country, aiming to reach between twelve and fifteen partners by 2025, who are specialized in the industry segment, such as government, retail, health, energy, financials, and others. With a growth partnership strategy of around 100% for the next year, the company currently has three partners in Brazil, two in Argentina, one in Chile, and one in Paraguay.
Amaral considers measuring client gains and financial return as the main challenge to be faced in his new journey. "We need to create business processes and use cases by vertical that achieve a tangible Return on Investment – ROI metric, as the client is looking for something measurable in ROI, productivity, gains, risk management, and compliance. This is the challenge: how to create project prototypes that allow us to measure our clients' return and gains," explains the executive.
Celso Amaral has degrees and specializations, such as engineering, at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica – ITA; a postgraduate degree in business administration from EAESP / FGV; leadership for senior executives at the Stan Slap Institute; specialization in corporate finance from Babson College; specialization in organizational leadership from the Center for Creative Leadership – CCL; and specialization in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from The Wharton School. "I am very happy to be part of the Kore.ai team because it is a solid company in the market, it has been around for a decade, and is ranked first in the top quadrants by research institutes, with its experience proven by hundreds of clients around the world," exalts Amaral.
Kore.ai is a software developer specializing in conversational solutions, founded in 2014, and currently has about 1,000 employees, with more than 70% consisting of developers and specialists. The company has physical offices in the USA, United Kingdom, India, Japan, and South Korea, in addition to Brazil, where the company has been present since 2022. Most of your clients are in North America, Europe, and Asia. More than 100 million consumers and 500,000 company employees have already interacted with conversational platforms of virtual assistants created by the platform. Kore.ai (matrix) recently went through a Series D funding round, raising $150 million.
