Take Blip, an online messaging platform for businesses, today announced that it raised $70 million in a Series B round led by Warburg Pincus. CEO Roberto Oliveira said that the capital, which brings Take Blip's total raised to $170 million, will be put toward product development, mergers and acquisitions, and customer acquisition.

Not every customer prefers to text businesses. But a growing number do -- at least the according to surveys commissioned by platforms with messaging services to sell. Messaging vendor Avochato found that almost two-thirds (63%) of respondents would switch to a company that messaged rather than called, while Yotpo -- an ecommerce marketing company -- reports that over half of shoppers want to receive texts from brands.

Questionable though the sources may be, Take Blip's success is some evidence that there's demand from the business side. Founded over 20 years ago -- in 1999 -- by Oliveira, Daniel Costa (head of people), Sérgio Passos (CTO), Marcelo Oliveira (chairman), and Antônio Oliveira, Brazil-based Take Blip has evolved into a cloud product that extracts insights from customer-business interactions across channels including WhatsApp, Instagram, Apple Messages for Business, Google Business Chat, and Telegram.

Image Credits: Take Blip

"In the early stages of the internet, 20 years ago, every company needed to have a website because people started to experience the brands online and use Google to search for brands and products," Oliveira told TechCrunch via email. "What we see now is a new paradigmatic shift towards conversations ... People spend time in social conversations online, with friends and family in a seamless dialogue, which Take Blip is trying to replicate for companies ... The real value proposition of Blip is to ensure the ability to understand customer feedbacks and enable high-speed evolution."

Take Blip customers, which include Coca-Cola and Nestlé, get tools to automate conversations with chatbots that can hand off complex issues to customer service reps. As do many other vendors in the messaging space, Take Blip also provides analytics to monitor reps' performance -- a feature with which some might take issue (particularly considering the company retains data for up to five years). But Oliveira argues that it's necessary to maintain a certain level of service.