Mobile CRM company, Helpshift raises $23M in Series B funding
San-Fransisco based Helpshift, a customer relationship management (CRM) company for mobile applications has raised $23 million in Series B funding from Microsoft Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. The round was in participation with existing investors like Intel Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, True Ventures and Visionnaire Ventures.
According to Abinash Tripathy, CEO, Helpshift, the fresh flow of funds will be put to use in expanding the team across R&D, sales and marketing. Helpshift was co-founded by Baishampayan Ghose and Tripathy in 2010. It has its back office in India with about 60 engineers, while the US and Europe accounts for marketing and sales with 33 professionals.
Helpshift, which uses SaaS as a platform to operate, is in a quest to enhance its customer management solutions by providing Software Development Kits (SDK’s) to companies and build a chat bridge (read chatbots) between users of their mobile apps and their customer service teams.
Its mobile app chat business, claims the company, has been installed in over 1.3 billion devices worldwide, serving more than 300 million customers monthly. The client base enjoyed by the CRM provider includes Zynga, VirginMedia, Microsoft, WesternUnion, Flipboard, Shyp, Luxe and WordPress and gaming companies like Supercell, the maker of clash of clans.
Till date, customer support involves users e-mailing companies about their queries or looking up FAQ pages on websites but the customer engagement and support industry is ready to evolve, believes Abhinash Tripathy.
He said:
“Consumers are tired of waiting for support agents to get back to them, and companies are tired of staffing expensive support teams to answer common, or even predictable, problems in the first place. People want immediate help, wherever they are, especially when using mobile applications… This is the year we champion a new model of support, one that’s better for both consumers, as well as the companies serving them.”