Freshdesk buys Chatimity

Customer support software maker Freshdesk Inc. one of India’s most well-funded product start-ups had acquired Bengaluru based chat-bot firm Chatimity to augment its product offerings. Chatimity is the sixth in a series of small companies Freshdesk has acquired and the second in the chat space. In December last year, Freshdesk acquired Konotor, which helped businesses chat with their customers within apps.

Freshdesk acquired Airwoot, a social customer support platform in April, Framebench, a file collaboration platform in February, Frilp, a social recommendation app in October, and 1Click, a video chat platform in August. Chat will play an important role in the future of communication for customer service but scaling that infrastructure continues to be a challenge.

Scaling quality customer support along with a rapidly expanding user base is a challenge that most internet-based firms face. With Chatimity’s bot, MITI, this can be used to converse with thousands of users in real time, Freshdesk hopes to help companies solve this problem. Although bots have been around for a while in one form or the other, advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing have made chat-bots - bots that can emulate human conversations more accessible and popular than ever, with several companies such as Facebook and Slack opening up their platforms for chat-bots builders.

Freshdesk, which has so far raised $95 million from venture capital firms Accel Partners, Google Capital and Tiger Global Management LLC, has 50,000 customers globally, and competes with Helpshift, and global heavyweights ZenDesk and Salesforce.com. The company is based in San Bruno, California, with offices in London, Sydney and Chennai.

Freshdesk buys start-up Airwoot

Customer support software maker Freshdesk Inc. has acquired Airwoot, which help companies spot customer queries and complaints on social media that require urgent attention. Customer support on social channels is key for digital businesses and using platforms like Airwoot enables them to predict conversations that may go viral and take action.

Delivering customer support via Social media continues to be a challenge for many companies given the high volume of noise in the medium. Airwoot AI technology provides a powerful platform to power the social engagement centres of the future. Airwoot used by firms such as Snapdeal, Xiaomi Corp., Ola, Paytm, Grofers, Jet Airways, MakeMyTrip and Cleartrip.com will continue as a standalone product.

For Freshdesk, one of India’s most well-funded product start-ups, Airwoot from Memeticlabs Technologies Pvt. Ltd is the fifth acquisition in nine months. Last April, Freshdesk raised $50 Million from investors Tiger Global Management, Accel Partners and Google Capital, bringing its total funding to $90 Million. The company has been successfully integrating start-ups it bought, into its own product portfolio.

In February, Freshdesk rolled out a new product, Hotline.io, its third since its launch in 2011. Hotline.io was built on the back of its December acquisition of Konotor, which helps businesses chat with their consumer inside apps. Previously, Freshdesk has acquired Framebench, a file collaboration platform in February, Frilp, a social recommendation app in October and 1CLICK.io, a video chat platform in August.