LimeChat Raises $4.2 Mn Funding To Help D2C Brands Leverage Conversational Marketing

AI chatbot startup LimeChat has raised $4.2 Mn in seed funding round led by Stellaris Venture Partners. The funding round also saw participation from pi Ventures, Titan Capital and marquee angel investors.

This is the startup’s second seed funding round. It plans to utilise the fund in strengthening its product and expand its go to market operations.

The startup had raised $750K last year as part of its first seed round led by pi Ventures and Stellaris Venture Partners. 

Aniket Bajpai and Nikhil Gupta founded LimeChat in 2020 to develop a conversational marketing ecosystem that could enable direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands to augment online sales conversations with customers by directly selling across chat mediums including WhatsApp, Meta Messenger and Instagram.

LimeChat’s assistant lets the brand instantly respond to customer queries throughout the buying journey, from product discovery to checkout to returns. 

According to LimeChat, its WhatsApp Retention Campaigns help brands engage customers on WhatsApp at critical points in their buying journey, from abandoned checkout to feedback to win-back of existing users. The startup claims that this can help brands increase campaign conversions by 3X, reduce support workloads by 70%, and improve customer satisfaction. 

In the last six months, LimeChat has witnessed a 3X growth and has expanded its client base to over 125 brands in India, including Mamaearth, MCaffeine, Wow Skin Science, Man Matters, among others, said the startup.

Talking about the funding, Alok Goyal, partner, Stellaris Venture Partners said, “D2C as a category has witnessed explosive growth in the last few years. Pairing this with the opportunity that WhatsApp poses for brands to leverage as a commercial channel can create exceptional customer experiences.”

LimeChat currently competes against the likes of Verloop, Haptik, Yellow.ai and unicorn Gupshup in the broader segment of developing conversational AI assistants for businesses to interact and communicate with customers through the web, app, SMS or other messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.

Shubham Sandeep, MD at pi Ventures, said that LimeChat’s speed and quality of execution and growth have been astounding. “Some of India’s top brands have already seen an increase in sales and reduction in customer support costs and response times by leveraging the sophisticated Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine developed by LimeChat.” 

Conversational AI is a set of technologies that combine speech-based technology, NLP and machine learning (ML) into one platform to build automated messaging and speech-enabled applications for specific and multiple use cases across verticals. 

According to a research report, the global conversational AI market size is expected to grow to $18.4 Bn by 2026 from $6.8 Bn in 2021, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21.8% during the forecast period.

On the other hand, the main market segment that LimeChat caters to, the D2C brands market is also showing a sharp upward trend. The pandemic-fueled ecommerce growth in the last two years has ushered in the decade of D2C brands that are looking to tap into a $300 Bn market opportunity.