• Berlin-based Charles has raised $20 million in Series A funding from Salesforce Ventures. 
• The startup offers "conversational commerce," which enables brands to sell via WhatsApp.
• Check out the 9-slide pitch deck Charles used to raise the fresh funds below.

A startup that enables companies to sell products and services through WhatsApp and other chat apps has raised $20 million from Salesforce Ventures.

Berlin-based Charles, which was founded in 2020, uses what it calls "conversational commerce" to target customers where they interact with their friends and family. The company focuses on direct-to-consumer brands currently but wants to expand to enterprise customers in the future.

Charles' tech enables companies to market to customers, respond to consumer queries, and conclude sales through various chat platforms. The startup claims 90% of its promotional material is opened by customers, considerably higher than the open rate associated with newsletters delivered through email.

"We're humbled to raise given the current market conditions, this round size-wise is comparable to the rounds we saw last year which shows the faith investors have in us, plus our growth in the past two years," Charles cofounder Andreas Tussing told Insider. 

Effectively, Charles connects chat app APIs to customer relationship management platforms like Shopify so that users can effectively begin and complete a purchase within one chat, without having to exit the page. The startup's cofounders told Insider it aimed to combine the best of traditional in-person retail with the ease and speed of e-commerce through its platform. 

The company makes money by charging brands a small fee per month to cover Charles' costs while also taking a cut based on the number of conversions. 

"Conversational commerce is very natural in Latin America and South East Asia but not in Europe because many people had the luxury of growing up with a desktop," Artjem Weissbeck, Charles CEO told Insider. "Unlike email, you have a high open rate for chat because it's a high level of trust that a consumer has in a brand to give up their number."

Half of Brazilians already buy goods and services via WhatsApp while WeChat transacted $400 billion in China last year, the company added. 

Charles, which was previously backed by Accel and HV Capital, raised the Series A funding as it looks to expand to new countries. The fresh funds will also go toward tripling its headcount of 62 in the next 18 months.

Check out Charles' pitch deck below: