Mumbai based startup Haptik, that we recently reviewed last month raises $1 million from Kalaari Capital. The startup will use the funds to boost its marketing and product offering in India.
Kalaari Capital, which is typically a series A-stage investor, came into the seed round.
Haptik is basically a Text Message app for getting Customer Support from over 170 brands/organization, the app is commonly known as WhatsApp for customer support. It is also a messaging app that connects brand experts to customers.
The idea of conceptualising Haptik was discussed in 2012, at a conference on mobile apps when Harish Anand Thilakan (now the Creative Head and MD at Haptik) came up to Aakrit proposing the idea of an app where brands could easily communicate with users. Once the basic version of Haptik was ready, Aakrit and Swapan quit their jobs to start the company in Aug 2013. They have offices in Mumbai and San Francisco, with most of the team currently in Mumbai.
"The next phase will be to gain as many users as possible," said Aakrit Vaish, CEO of the company, whose app has seen 25,000 downloads since the time it went live six months ago.
"We took an exception to Haptik, because the team intrigued us," said Rajesh Raju, managing director of Kalari Capital.
Haptik has a team of 17 people handles everything from marketing to technology and are currently processing about 100,000 messages/month. Their target is to take this to 1m messages/month within 3 months, and 5m messages/month by the end of this year.
Kalaari is Bangalore-based, a $160 million venture capital fund that invests in early-stage, technology-oriented companies in India. Its portfolio companies include Snapdeal, Mynta, Urban Ladder, Bluestone, Magzter, Swipe and Apalya.
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