SleekFlow, a social commerce platform headquartered in Singapore and Hong Kong that has built a conversational AI suite for customer engagement targeting Asian markets, announced on Wednesday that it has secured an additional $7 million in funding, which will be used to continue the company's AI development, expand further into Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and expand into Europe.
The startup's funding and growth plans underscore the rapid rise of social commerce, in which merchants use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok and YouTube to promote their products and find new customers, and consumers use the same social media platforms to discover and purchase products.
Social commerce is currently growing faster than traditional e-commerce. In the Asia Pacific region alone, the estimated market value of social commerce is expected to exceed $894 million by 2028, showing 10.6% growth from 2022.
Conversational AI, in particular, is playing a major role in the development of social commerce. AI-based chat capabilities allow merchants to scale customer service to accommodate large volumes of users while keeping their operations lean. It also adds a programmatic layer to the process, where analytics provide insights into what works and what doesn't, when and for whom, and can automate different responses to different audiences accordingly.
The conversational AI industry is projected to reach $49.9 billion by 2030, up 24.9% from $13.2 billion in 2024.
Given the need to scale not just social commerce but ecommerce as a whole, it may not be surprising to hear that the conversational AI space is crowded. SleekFlow's competitors include Messagebird, Respond.io, Gupshup, Omnichat, Trengo, WATI, Unifonic, and Verloop.
Henson Tsai, founder and CEO of SleekFlow, says his startup sets itself apart from these and other rivals with more streamlined features, including omnichannel capabilities (i.e. marketing to multiple platforms and interfaces from a single dashboard), marketing automation, and a user-friendly flow builder that gives you the flexibility to create a unique chat experience for each customer. Instant checkout features include in-chat payment links, collaborative team functionality, built-in CRM platform integrations with HubSpot and SalesForce, and e-commerce capabilities.
The plan is to expand the platform “to offer fully automated sales and support via voice, call and email, providing unparalleled value to customers around the world,” Tsai told TechCrunch.
The startup recently appointed Gao Lei, an AI and big data veteran who has been a tech leader in Silicon Valley for more than 20 years, as its new CTO.
“Since appointing Silicon Valley veteran Gao Lei as our chief technology officer, we have significantly strengthened our engineering efforts to position ourselves at the forefront of innovative technology and advanced AI,” Tsai said.
SleekFlow is built on a multi-tiered SaaS business model, with an optional add-on for customers who also want to set up and run a WhatsApp Business messaging channel. The startup attracts sales and marketing teams and is used by a range of businesses, from small teams to large enterprises across the insurance, healthcare, telecommunications and retail sectors. Customers include Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN), De'Longhi, online furniture company Cellini and Malaysian home appliances manufacturer Khind.
SleekFlow is currently operational in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates. Tsai said consumer behavior is shifting rapidly toward online shopping over traditional brick-and-mortar stores among these countries, especially in Indonesia, which is projected to be one of the largest consumer markets by 2030. Given the high purchasing power of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, these regions are also likely to become major markets for social commerce, Tsai added.
Seoul-based venture capital firm Atinum Investment led the funding round, with participation from existing backers AEF Greater Bay Area Fund and Transcend Capital Partners, as well as Moses Tsang, former general partner at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia LLC. Previously, SleekFlow raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global.
The company declined to comment on its valuation, but in addition to having raised $15 million to date, notable financial metrics include annual recurring revenue (ARR) growing from about $1 million to $2 million in December 2022 to $8 million to $9 million as of June 2024. Staff has also grown from 60 to 160, and customers have grown by more than 5,000 worldwide, Tsai told TechCrunch.
