Customer support platform Helpshift has secured additional funding from Cisco Investments as part of its Series B round. This brings their total funding to more than $38 Mn.
The round was raised earlier in June 2016 with participation from Microsoft Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and other existing investors, including Intel Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, True Ventures and Visionnaire Ventures.
The deal aims to explore opportunities to integrate Helpshift’s in-app customer support solutions with Cisco’s leading contact center solutions.
“We continue to invest in strategic solutions to help propel technology developments that will solve challenges for our customers, partners, and beyond,” said Rob Salvagno, Head of Cisco Investments and Vice President of Cisco Corporate Development. “Through our investment, we look forward to supporting Helpshift to enable companies to provide best in-class mobile customer care through their data-centric messaging platform.”
Helpshift was launched in 2010 by Abinash Tripathy and Baishampayan Ghose and is based out of Pune. The platform helps companies to engage their customers with their apps through targeted push campaigns, and proactively avoid any in-app frustration through native FAQs and In-App Messaging.
As Abinash said,
“Apps have become the primary way in which consumers and employees in the enterprise are accessing products and services. Just like customer service moved away from phone (voice) to email in the era of the Web, we are now seeing a transition where customer service is moving inside apps to eliminate all the friction in the process of supporting users.”
He further added, “With the additional funding from Cisco Investments, we are looking to help the entire contact center industry transition from being reactive to proactive while driving higher customer satisfaction and lowering cost.”
The major clients of the company lists Zynga, VirginMedia, Microsoft, WesternUnion, Flipboard, Shyp, Luxe, WordPress and more.
The startup claims to be installed on more than 1.3 billion devices worldwide, and serves 300+ million mobile customers monthly. 93% of its customer base is outside India while the 7% Indian clientele consists of notable ones like Times Media (Gaana), PepperTap, Common Floor, Swiggy, and Redbus among others. Its competitors include Zendesk and Salesforce.
