Shopify is renowned in the business industry for investing in small startups that aim to smoothen the process of buying and selling in one way or another. While the brand has already invested in several west-based startups, this is the first time that Shopify has stepped into the Southeast Asia region to invest in a startup named WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox).
This Hong Kong and Malaysia-based startup, WATI, was created to make the usage of WhatsApp for Business easier. With the volume of people using WhatsApp, and with the number of people now having business accounts on WhatsApp, the messenger app is soon expected to need external support to keep its motor running.
WATI aims at providing customer sales and engagement tools for WhatsApp for Business and is expected to do extremely well in the coming years.
WATI and its investors
Recently, with the help of several investors, WATI raised a total amount of $23 Million in series B funding. Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia, being an old investor in WATI, is joined by new investors in series B like DST Global Partners and Shopify.
Though the amount invested by Shopify in WATI is not disclosed so far, the expansion of funding from the last round to round B shows significant improvement and thereby implies that the startup indeed has potential. WATI is available in 75+ countries and the app is catering to over 6000 customers already. With over $23 Million raised in this round, the startup is expected to expand manifolds in the upcoming years.
The co-founders of WATI, Bianca Ho and Ken Yeung started building the brand in 2016 however, they weren’t very sure because they didn’t have the resources to execute a sophisticated and complex AI system.
Their belief, as they quoted, was, “our consumption was assumed that only larger enterprises had the resources to deploy a successful digital assistant with artificial intelligence.”
Soon they realised that people who had shifted to online platforms for business during the pandemic were rather looking for simpler solutions to make the process of selling easier. This is when they came up with the idea of WATI and today, the app is used in the fields of house cleaning, education centres, schools, ed-tech, medical facilities, fintech, D2C brands and Shopify stores in over 75 countries.
Shopify’s previous investments
Before investing in WATI in 2022, Shopify was also seen investing in another AI-based US startup called ‘Crossing Minds’. Crossing Minds is a company that was set up in October last year and held its series A funding this year in April where it raised an amount of $10 Million. One of the objectives of the startup is to help businesses develop a stronger relationship with their customers without violating privacy as it does not use personal customer data.
Shopify is often seen investing in customer relations software that makes online business easier and that act as a catalyst in promoting online sales. Recently, Shopify invested in another customer relation software brand called Loop. This US-based brand makes exchanges and returns easier by helping merchants in the management of this significant issue.
After raising a significant amount of money in the series B funding, the co-founder of WATI, Bianca Ho said, “The team has grown, revenue and customers have doubled, and now we look to scale the business, operations, teams around the world.”
Over the past year, Shopify has been investing in several startups to facilitate online shopping. Meanwhile, the brand is also working hard to collaborate with major social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook etc. to deliver a wholesome package of Shopify integrated creator’s economy.
A recent tweet by the official account of Shopify read, “Shopify Audiences just got even better. The big news is that Audiences now integrates with Google. That’s right. You can now connect your Google Ads account and export custom audiences to your Google & YouTube ad sets: https://shopify.com/enterprise/shopify-audiences-with-google“
With a consequential shift of businesses from offline shops to online platforms, many AI-based and customer relation-based startups have gained appreciable popularity, WATI being one of them. Shopify, itself being a platform for allowing people to set up shops online, always seems to be on the lookout to invest in startups that make the process easier.
