Sequoia leads $16M round in Akosha, India’s Whatsapp for customer support

India’s Akosha, a customer support startup, today announced that it raised US$16 million in a series B round led by investor Sequoia Capital. Last year, the company had raised US$5 million from the same investor.

Akosha was founded five years ago on the premise that the channels of consumer interactions with businesses in India are broken. It pioneered the model of a single destination for consumers to register complaints against major brands. Most of its users use it to report a faulty product and scream for a refund.

The startup claims to handle 30,000 consumer inquiries every day over the web, telephone, and their Android chat app. Akosha monetizes these inquiries by providing social CRM platform OneDirect to manage customer experience across all online channels. 130 brands, including Kotak Mahindra Bank, Voltas, Aircel, Snapdeal, Micromax, and Makemytrip, use Akosha.

Whatsapp-like app

The company’s Android app for registering complaints or asking for support launched four months ago. The Whatsapp-like app allows users to have live chats with customer support executives.

Besides complaints, the app can also be used for product discovery, pricing information, discounts, customer service, booking appointments, and travel research. Currently, the app supports more than 18,000 chat sessions per day.

With fresh funding, the company will market this app and build further iterations to ease the process of obtaining customer support. “We will hire over 200 software engineers and product managers to build the platform,” says Ankur Singla, founder of Akosha.

Over the last one year, the company has grown its employee base from 180 to well over 300 and recently opened a technology and product office in Bangalore.

With the app, the company competes with Kalaari Capital-backed Haptik which raised US$1 million last year. Recently, WeChat also started providing customer support inside its app.