AI chatbot startup Yellow Messenger banks $20m in series B round

Global demand for conversational AI systems has become urgent and vast. According to research from advisory firm Gartner, one in every three companies worldwide has already integrated the technology into their operations.

India-based Yellow Messenger, a startup that provides businesses with an AI chatbot for customer engagement, said it has raised US$20 million in series B money to capture more of the growing market.

From left: Yellow Messenger co-founders Rashid Khan, Raghu Ravinutala, and Jaya Kishore Reddy Gollareddy / Photo credit: Yellow Messenger

The new funding round, which was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Lightspeed India, bumps up the company’s total funding to US$24 million, according to a statement.

Yellow Messenger looks to use the fresh capital to fuel international growth across Latin America and Asia Pacific, as well as new regions such as the US and Europe.

In addition, it plans to invest further in product innovation, which includes improving its bot’s multilingual voice capabilities and expanding enterprise integrations. Currently, its chatbots are available in over 120 languages, including Bahasa, Bengali, Cantonese, English, Hindi, and Thai.

The startup is also looking to launch a developer marketplace for virtual assistants, which will enable third-party developers to create, launch, and distribute their own chatbots to Yellow Messenger clients.

Through a partnership with Facebook Messenger, the company said it has recently been appointed by the National Health Authority of India to provide state governments with chatbots to help with citizen engagement amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Raghu Ravinutala, CEO and co-founder of Yellow Messenger, said that at this time, the startup has seen a surge in global demand from the banking, healthcare, food and beverage, retail, and ecommerce sectors as a result of the crisis. In response, the company has deployed special chatbots for enterprises tailored to drive business continuity.

Yellow Messenger was founded in 2017. It claims to have been growing 5x in bookings year on year since its establishment. It has over 100 clients globally, including companies such as Accenture, Flipkart, Grab, and Xiaomi India.

Last year, it raised US$4 million in a series A funding round led by Lightspeed India Partners.