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SleekFlow , a Singapore- and Hong Kong - headquartered social mercantilism platform that has progress a conversational AI suite for customer fight aim to Asiatic markets , said Wednesday it had secured an additional $ 7 million in funding . The money will be used to uphold developing its AI , as well as to penetrate deeper into Southeast Asia and the Middle East and make inroads into Europe .
The startup ’s fundraise and plans for maturation underscore the rapid ascending of social mercantilism — where trafficker leverage political program like Facebook , Instagram , WhatsApp , TikTok and YouTube to market their goods and receive novel client , and consumers apply the same societal media platforms to discover and buy thing .
Social commerce is presently grow faster thanconventional e - commerce . The estimated market value of social commerce in the Asia Pacific region alone is expectedto surpass $ 894 million by 2028 , make up a 10.6 % ontogenesis from 2022 .
Within that , colloquial AI is a big part of how social commerce has developed . Using AI - establish chat functionality means trafficker can descale their customer servicing to work with masses of users while still keeping their own operations skimpy . It also add together a programmatic bed to the process , with analytics giving them more insight into what works , and what does not , and when and to whom , and to automate different form of responses to different audiences accordingly .
The conversational AI industry is plan to reach$49.9 billion by 2030 , up 24.9 % from $ 13.2 billion in 2024 .
Given the grading imperative of not just social Commerce Department but e - commerce overall , it ’s perhaps unsurprising to hear that the conversational AI space is a crowded one . SleekFlow ’s competitors includeMessageBird , Respond.io , Gupshup , Omnichat , Trengo , WATI , Unifonicand Verloop .
Henson Tsai , the founder and CEO of SleekFlow , enounce that the inauguration sets itself aside from these and other competitor by way of more streamlined features . Those feature film include omnichannel capability ( i.e. , market to more than one program and port from a exclusive splasher ) , marketing automation , and a user - friendly flowing constructor that enables flexibleness in creating unique New World chat experiences for each customer . Instant checkout capabilities include in - chat payment links , collaborative team feature , build - in CRM platform desegregation with HubSpot and Salesforce , and e - commerce functionality .
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The plan is to expand its political platform “ with offering underway for fully automated sales and backing journey in vocalism , calls and email to drive home unparalleled value to our customers across , ” Tsai tell TechCrunch .
The startup also lately constitute a new CTO , Gao Lei , an AI and bragging information veteran with more than two decades of tech leadership in Silicon Valley .
“ Since the appointment of our primary engineering officer , Gao Lei , a Silicon Valley veteran soldier , we have importantly increase our engine room efforts to be at the forefront of modern tech and advanced AI , ” Tsai said .
SleekFlow is built on amulti - tier SaaS patronage modelwith an optional add - on for client who need to also specify up and go a WhatsApp Business message transmission channel . The startup woo sales agreement and marketing teams and is used by company rove from little teams to large business across the insurance , healthcare , telecommunication , and retail sector . Hong Kong Broadband internet ( HKBN ) , Delonghi , on-line piece of furniture fellowship Cellini , and Malaysia ’s habitation consumer electric appliance Lord Khind are among its customers .
SleekFlow is functional today in Singapore , Hong Kong , Malaysia , Indonesia , Brazil , and the United Arab Emirates . Of those , Tsai suppose that consumer behavior especially in Indonesia — which is envision to become one of the largest consumer marketplace by 2030 — has been apace reposition toward online shopping over traditional brick - and - howitzer memory . gamey disbursal power in Saudi Arabia and the UAE means these realm are also likely to be primal markets for societal commerce , Tsai added .
Atinum Investment , a Seoul - based VC business firm , led this latest funding around , with be backer AEF Greater Bay Area Fund and Transcend Capital Partners also participating , alongside Moses Tsang , a former world-wide partner of Goldman Sachs Group and chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia LLC . antecedently , SleekFlow raised an $ 8 million Series A extend by Tiger Global .
The company slump to annotate on its rating , but in add-on to having raised $ 15 million to date , some other fiscal metrics to note are that its annual recurring gross ( ARR ) has increase to $ 8 million to $ 9 million as of June 2024 from around $ 1million to $ 2 million in December 2022 . Its staff has also develop to 160 from 60 , and client have increased by more than 5,000 globally , Tsai told TechCrunch .
