MessageBird bags $200m series C round, expanding in Asia

MessageBird, an Amsterdam-based cloud communications platform, announced that it has raised US$200 million in a series C funding round. The fundraise was led by Silicon Valley’s Spark Capital and values MessageBird at US$3 billion.

MessageBird founder and CEO Robert Vis / Photo credit: MessageBird

Companies such as Bonnier, Glynn Capital, LGT Lightstone, Longbow, Mousse Partners, and NewView Capital also participated in the round. As part of this investment, Spark Capital general partner Will Reed will join MessageBird’s board.

Founded in 2011, MessageBird offers a suite of both omnichannel products and cloud communications application programming interfaces to enable developers and enterprises to communicate with customers.

Its products consist of Inbox, which enables businesses to communicate and share media with customers, Omnichannel Chat Widget, which helps customers communicate with their teams, as well as Flow Builder, a robotic process automation platform that powers businesses to also build bespoke omnichannel experiences.

What are its future plans? As businesses struggle to pivot from physical in-store and call center-based customer service to a fully remote workforce and online-only sales, the company said it witnessed a global surge in demand for messaging-first customer communication tools.

Responding to this, MessageBird is evolving from a communications platform-as-a-service company to an omnichannel platform-as-a-service company.

With the new funds, it will also triple the size of its global team and further expand into its core markets in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

How much traction has it gotten? MessageBird claims to have been profitable for six years before it raised US$60 million in a series A round in 2017.

It currently has more than 15,000 customers such as Lufthansa Airlines, Heineken, Hugo Boss, Uber, Deliveroo, and Facebook Messenger. In the Asian market, it also serves Tokopedia, Alibaba, Tencent, Shopee, ByteDance, WeChat, and Line.

“I think Asia is an exciting market, and one of the largest messaging-first markets in the world. So I think we have a unique role to play in helping businesses there make the transition to seamless omnichannel communications with their customers who are already using these messaging platforms at scale to talk to their friends,” Robert Vis, founder and CEO of MessageBird told Tech in Asia.

What is its funding history? 

• Series B round (2019): US$40 million from Atomico and Accel
• Series A round (2017): US$60 million from Accel, Atomico, and Y Combinator