Akosha Rebrands As Helpchat: A Chat-Based Personal Assistant App

Akosha, an online complaints redressal company, has rebranded itself to  Helpchat, a messenger based personal assistant platform.

Aksoha has tied up with Mumbai-based  Ogilvy & Mather and Open Design to help Akosha in its rebranding as Helpchat, the company will now shut down its complaints redressal service.

“Reason for Akosha’s rebranding lies in the fact that it was interpreted as  a mere complaint platform but with Helpchat we aim at being the company, which gets everything done with chat based assistance .” as Ankur Singla told Inc42.

Helpchat is a chat-based personal assistant app that helps people to get things done in the areas like – Mobile/ DTH Recharge & info, Tech Support, Travel, Holiday Guidance, Shopping , product search, stylist support, Beauty , Entertainment, Gifts, Laundry – on demand, Nearby local shops, Home services – painting, cleaning, plumber, electrician etc

How It Works?

1. Followed by sync of  user’s phone number; Home Screen has three operational choices – Companies, Explore, Chats.
2. Companies:  User can choose the company and app provides assistance from finding the nearest center to booking an appointment, finding deals and keeping track of the order.  It also has an option to chat with experts in that segment.
3. Explore: Under this category,  user can ask assistance based on the discover nearby businesses or they can  choose a category and app will suggest the nearby businesses.  Ensue this, app helps the user from scheduling a pickup to check/ compare rates, keeping track of bookings and order status along with offering  personalised ideas on the product purchase.
4. Chats allow user to ask anything and everything to the already created channels of companies like – Coupon Dunia, Foodpanda, Snapdeal, PayTm, BookMyShow and Google.

All in all, Helpchat is the friend you seek when you can’t find a store or get confused in choosing the perfect dress. In addition to that, it is also the friend who has all the company’s contacts and knows all about the booking and scheduling procedure.

So come any query, all you need is to drop a text!

Helpchat has planned for three types of monetisation model based on Commission, Leads and Marketing. However, the company is not monetising as of now. On which, Ankur told us, “We first want to focus on scaling and then thereafter they will be thinking of introducing a monetisation model.”

Helpchat app is now available on the Android store and has over 350k downloads facilitating about 30 thousand chat sessions per day. Company plans to take up this count to 2 lakh sessions each day.

Company’s  target audience is anyone between 21-30 living in the metro cities. With offices in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, Helpchat is currently a 600 member team and is planning to add about 100 more members to its tech team, in the next six months.

Delhi-based, Akosha was founded by Ankur Singla in 2010, to resolve Indian consumers’ day to day consumer complaints by reaching up to the right person in the concerned brand. Recently in May 2015,  company had raised $16Mn in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital.

In Indian market, Helpchat competes with other apps such as Mumbai-based Haptik, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone backed LookUp and Yellow Messenger. Haptik had raised $1Mn from Kalaari Capital in September 2014.

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