Hong Kong based WATI, a CRM tool built for WhatsApp, raises US$23 million in fun...

Hong Kong based WATI, a CRM tool built for WhatsApp, raises US$23 million in funding from Shopify, Tiger Global

Hong Kong based WATI, a CRM tool built for WhatsApp, raises US$23 million in funding from Shopify, Tiger Global

9 hours ago

Hong Kong based software start-up WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox), which helps businesses interact with their customers on WhatsApp, has raised US$23 million in series B round led by Tiger Global Management, Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify

Existing investors Sequoia India and Sequoia Southeast Asia also participated the Series B funding round. It is worth noting that WATI’s series B round is Shopify’s first venture investment in a start-up operating in the Southeast Asia region

Shopify has a long history of investing in companies, many of which have connections to its ecosystem. Apart from the strategic investment, Shopify has also established a partnership with WATI, according to WATI co-founder Bianca Ho

Launched and incubated by Clare.AI, a business chatbot maker founded in 2016 that has enterprise clients including JP Morgan and Fidelity.

Built on WhatsApp for Business’ API, WATI specializes in customer sales and engagement tools for WhatsApp that allows small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to send personalized notifications from their system.

In many emerging markets, and mature markets like Europe, WhatsApp is the preferred communication channel between customers and businesses. WATI helps non-technical businesses scale their customer support, customer engagement and acquisition through its CRM.

Since its launch, WATI claims to have over 6,000 customers across 78 countries, comprising SMBs like Shopify stores. WATI also has integrations with platforms like Zoho and Google Sheets.

An example of how WATI works is a marketing campaign launched by an e-commerce company. With WATI, the e-commerce company can gets 60 to 100 messages a day from customers. and sends about 30,000 messages every day when campaigns are active.

The fresh capital will be used for recruitment and investments on WATI’s product stack for low-code automation. WATI also has expansion plan for emerging markets, such as Latin America and Southeast Asia.

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