KaszeK Ventures led a R$20m Series A in OmniChat, a Brazilian chat-based customer service platforms that uses WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and SMS, with follow-on from Honey Island Capital, a seed investment firm run by EBANX founders. Honey Island Capital invested R$1-2m in OmniChat in January 2020.
(Press Release) – Today, OmniChat announced their Series A, a funding round led by Kaszek Ventures with participation from Ebanx, the Brazilian unicorn, through its investment fund Honey Island, as well as a consortium of prominent Brazilian Angels.
Built on the premise that the Brazilian consumer should be serviced and be able to complete the full commerce journey from discovery to purchase through their preferred channels, Omnichat offers an innovative B2B solution allowing brands and businesses to better connect with their customers. The OmniChat Platform empowers retailers to offer scalable humanized support and sales in messaging apps like Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, SMS, and Google RCS. The company has 300 enterprise customers including leader retailers in Brazil like Arezzo Co, Leroy Merlin, Telha Norte, oBoticário, Loreal Paris, L’occitane, Rihappy, PBKids, Havaianas, Pirelli, Dominos, and Kopenhagen.
“Chat Commerce blends the best aspects of the ecommerce mobile experience with the consultative shopping experience of bricks and mortar stores. Selling in messaging apps was always going to be a massive opportunity in Brazil, a country that lives on WhatsApp, but 2020 accelerated adoption with every passing month. Due to the COVID pandemic, large enterprises had to adapt quickly and Omnichat was the clear solution for their needs. Omnichat enabled these merchants to scale their chat commerce initiatives providing productivity gains, traceability, strong analytics and data protection using a mix of automated support by chatbot technology and human touch with sales reps,” says Mauricio Trezub CEO of OmniChat.
As a solution, Omnichat works to dramatically improve efficiency and productivity of the retail teams. They are enabled to satisfy customers and increase sales through this new platform. As an added bonus, on top of adding channels and functionality, OmniChat’s Platform made retail safer during this pandemic year. The platforms enabled entire retail workforces to stay engaged and employed while staying safe during the pandemic. These workers would have otherwise potentially been out of work or engaged in a constant stream of face to face interactions, risking exposure to COVID. Longterm, thanks to the OmniChat Platform, these employees became a deep pool of sales and support agents who can engage through their mobile devices and respond real time to consumers interacting via any channel the retailer owns, from ecommerce to branded communication channels, and anywhere the consumer sends a message.
“We were searching for a solution to sell through Whatsapp that could enable us to distribute digital consumers to our call center, now our chat commerce center, and our 320 physical stores and also easily integrate with our ecommerce platform. That’s why we chose Omnichat and we are seeing great results and confident we are providing a sensational shopping experience to our customers.” Says Camilo Carneiro, Digital Business of Rihappy, the largest toys retailer in Brazil. For brands like this, the platform provided a true win-win-win scenario, allowing consumers to have an amazing experience remotely, improving employee productivity, and providing a massive sales boost and improved experience for the brands and businesses. The numbers speak for themselves as nearly 1 in 12 Brazilian Whatsapp Users unknowingly connected with a brand through OmniChat in 2020 as the 300 enterprise brands exchanged more than 350 million messages over the platform.
This outcome was echoed by many other clients including Erica Teles Menezes, Open Innovation & digital Sr Manager at Loreal Paris. “We found in OmniChat a tool that efficiently helps us to meet two very current challenges: The acceleration of e-commerce and the desire to make the consumer’s journey increasingly personalized. The tool allows us to answer the many questions that consumers needed to clarify before making a final purchase and consequently accelerating business results.”
“We’re thrilled to be partnering with OmniChat, a team that is deeply experienced and wildly innovative. Mauricio has over 20 years of experience in the ecommerce space at CiaShop, TOTVS, and VTEX but continues to bring a fresh perspective every day alongside his Co-Founder Flavio. As the Co-Founder of MercadoLibre I believe that this commerce trend is going to be very relevant, as much as ecommerce, video-commerce, social-commerce. This is also a special and exciting deal for us at Kaszek because some 10 years ago when I was still part of MercadoLibre and Mauricio was in his days as Ciashop founder, we entered in partnership conversations with him. That did not work out at the time, but it is a pleasure to be finally partnering with him and we look forward to building something amazing together in OmniChat,” say Hernan Kazah, Managing Partner at Kaszek Ventures.
About Kaszek Ventures
Kaszek Ventures is a Latin American venture capital firm that partners with exceptional entrepreneurs to build lasting, high-impact technology-based companies whose main initial focus is Latin America. The firm is industry and stage agnostic, mainly investing in Seed, Series A and Series B. In addition to capital, it provides first-hand expertise and insights in strategy, operational execution, team-building, growth, technology, product, networking, fundraising and more. The firm was founded in 2011 by internet pioneers Hernan Kazah (MercadoLibre’s co-founder and former COO/CFO) and Nicolas Szekasy (MercadoLibre’s former CFO); Nicolas Berman, with 20 years of operational tech experience and former VP at MercadoLibre, also leads the firm alongside with Santiago Fossatti, who has been at Kaszek Ventures since the very beginning, and Andy Young, who has had extensive technology and product experience in several markets around the world. Some of the fund’s portfolio companies are: Nubank, QuintoAndar, Kavak, Creditas, TheNotCompany, Konfio, Loggi, GymPass, MadeiraMadeira, Escale, Bitso, and CrediJusto. www.kaszek.com/portfolio. Additional information please contact: pr@kaszek.com
About OmniChat
Omnichat is the leading Chat Commerce platform in Brazil. Mauricio Trezub and Flavio Negrão founded the company in 2016 with the mission of enabling medium and large companies to scale their digital commerce initiatives and provide a humanized and personal shopping experience in messaging apps. The company currently has 90 employees, 300 customers and is located in Curitiba, Brazil. www.omni.chat https://www.linkedin.com/company/omnichat/
