More than two billion people use WhatsApp worldwide, making it a crucial tool for many small enterprises. However, as businesses grow, even WhatsApp for Business might find it difficult to meet their demands. WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox) comes into play in this situation. WATI has developed client sales and engagement capabilities for the messaging app based on the API of WhatsApp for Business. The firm with offices in Hong Kong and Malaysia said today that it has raised $23 million in Series B funding to expand its staff and product.
Tiger Global served as the round’s lead investor, and new investors DST Global Partners and Shopify (the e-commerce platform’s first venture investment in a Southeast Asian firm) joined returning investors Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia and Tiger Global. WATI’s most recent round of funding, a $8.3 million Series A that was announced ten months ago, brought its total raised since 2020 to more than $35 million.
Bianca Ho and Ken Yeung, the founders of WATI, started collaborating in 2016 to create Clare.AI, an omnichannel AI digital assistant for big Asian businesses. To provide SMBs with a self-service, low-code product on the WhatsApp for Business API, they introduced WATI in 2020. Currently, the startup serves more than 6,000 clients across 75 nations, including SMBs in industries including house cleaning, educational institutions, edtech, financial services, healthcare, direct-to-consumer brands, and Shopify stores.
When Ho and Yeung were developing Clare.AI, “our belief was that only larger businesses had the capacity to implement a successful digital assistant with artificial intelligence,” according to Ho in an interview with TechCrunch. However, after a few years of working with their clients, the two found many of them were looking for a more straightforward answer, leading to the creation of WATI. Its launch was partially motivated by the digital acceleration brought on by the epidemic, as many companies hurried to go online.
WhatsApp is the main method of communication between customers and businesses in many developing nations as well as established nations like Europe. Through its CRM, WATI assists non-technical firms in scaling their customer service, customer engagement, and customer acquisition.
The customer engagement software from WATI, which enables clients to deliver customised notifications, was developed using the WhatsApp for Business API. The platform has tools like smart routing, canned responses, data tagging, and analytics, as well as a collaborative team inbox that is used by several agents. Low-code workflows, chatbots, and connections to e-commerce systems and CRMs can automate interactions. Additionally, WATI provides interfaces with websites like Google Sheets, Shopify, and Zoho.
A huge e-commerce company that uses WATI’s platform to run promotions like Prime Day is an example of how it is employed. When campaigns are active, the business sends roughly 30,000 messages daily and typically receives 60 to 100 messages from customers through WATI’s team inbox, the majority of which come through the WhatsApp chat on its website.
Another illustration is a client in edtech who has been using WATI for almost two years. They send 20,000 to 30,000 messages per day and rely on roughly 50 templates each month for lead generation, nurturing, payment reminders, and class updates. Additionally, WATI assists them in obtaining top-notch organic leads using a WhatsApp widget on their website.
While most SMBs initially use the native WhatsApp for Business app, according to Ho, WATI is a good fit for them as their organisations grow.
Funds will be utilised for hiring and investing in WATI’s low-code automation product stack. The business also includes go-to-market strategies for developing countries including Southeast Asia and Latin America.
