[Funding alert] Conversational AI startup Yellow Messenger raises $4M in Series A funding from Lightspeed, angels
The startup plans to use the funds to further its deep tech capabilities, and also expand across Asia, the Middle East, and other emerging markets.
![[Funding alert] Conversational AI startup Yellow Messenger raises $4M in Series A funding from Lightspeed, angels](https://images.yourstory.com/cs/2/bd251c60-2d6a-11e9-aa97-9329348d4c3e/CEO_Raghu_Ravinutala,YellowMessenger1560348837037.jpg?mode=crop&crop=faces&ar=2%3A1&format=auto&w=1920&q=75)
Raghu Ravinutala, CEO, Yellow Messenger
Enterprise conversational AI solution startup Yellow Messenger on Wednesday announced that it has raised Series A funding of $4 million (Rs 27 crore) from Lightspeed Venture Partners and prominent angel investors.
The company plans to use the funds to further its deep tech capabilities, and also expand its teams and presence in high-potential markets across Asia, the Middle East, and other emerging markets.
The angel investors that participated in the round include - Phanindra Sama, Founder, redBus and CIO of Telangana State, Kashyap Deorah, Founder of Hypertrack, Anand Swaminathan, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Co., Prashant Malik, Co-founder, Limeroad, Nishant Rao, former MD, Linkedin India, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, co-founders, Snapdeal, Monisha Varadan of Zephyr Ventures, and Alap Bharadwaj, APAC Innovation, Google.
Started three years ago, Bengaluru-based Yellow Messenger is a conversational AI platform that helps enterprises significantly boost efficiency and growth by offering always-on, intelligent conversational automation on text and voice across multiple channels like WhatsApp, Google assistant, Alexa, Web, and mobile apps.
Speaking on the investment, Yellow Messenger CEO Raghu Ravinutala says,
“We are excited about partnering with Lightspeed and our eminent angel investors to invest deeply in R&D and expand our global presence to build the most impactful enterprise technology company for the AI era. We’re excited about how enterprises are boosting efficiencies by a significant order of magnitude using our cognitive automation platform - we call them 10xEnterprises!”
The startup serves close to 100 large enterprise customers, across industry verticals including retail, travel and hospitality, banking, insurance, pharma and healthcare, energy, as well as consumer goods.
Its clients include the likes of Unilever, AXA, AIG, Bajaj Finance, HDFC Bank, Asian Paints, Dr Reddy labs, and Concentrix.
Speaking on their decision to invest in the startup, Dev Khare, Partner at Lightspeed Ventures,
“We believe that Asia’s businesses require fundamentally different solutions for enterprise software, driven by unique organisational structures and consumer expectations, Yellow Messenger is tapping into the messaging-centric expectation that Asia’s 4.5 billion consumers have for interacting with large consumer companies in verticals such as banking, financial services, utilities, travel, and ecommerce.”
Until now, the platform claims to have handled over a billion conversations, helping organisations improve revenue growth and reduce in-house support costs.
