Singapore’s Toku to acquire AiChat, eyes revenue surge in first year

Toku, a Singapore-headquartered cloud communications and customer experience (CX) provider, plans to buy AiChat, a conversational AI customer experience platform based in the city-state.

The size of the deal, which is set to close by the the third quarter of 2024, was not disclosed.

Toku and AiChat team/ Photo credit: Toku

AiChat helps brands automate business processes in customer service, marketing, and e-commerce via social messaging apps.

Meanwhile Toku, which currently creates bespoke cloud communications and customer engagement solutions for enterprises, hopes to enhance its existing service with AiChat and become a full-service CX tech firm.

The right fit

Founded in 2018 by Thomas Laboulle, Toku currently boasts an annual revenue of US$31 million as of 2023. The expanded capabilities and synergies achieved through the acquisition is expected to unlock an estimated 50% revenue boost for AiChat within a year after the purchase, CEO Laboulle tells Tech in Asia.

It will also enable Toku to provide a broader range of solutions, which would create “significant opportunities for upselling and cross-selling across our expanded customer base,” says Laboulle, though he did not give more details. The company counts Foodpanda, Zenyum and Prudential as some of its customers.

By acquiring AiChat, Toku can also enhance its existing voice, messaging, and cloud communications suite with a new layer of conversational AI, the CEO notes.

“The anticipated 50% revenue growth within the first year after acquiring AiChat will largely be unlocked by leveraging Toku’s established sales and marketing capabilities,” he adds.

With this, the company is aiming to reach EBITDA breakeven by the fourth quarter of this year and become cash flow positive by 2025.

What lies ahead

Initially, Toku will continue to develop AiChat’s existing road map as a standalone product. It also plans to leverage AiChat’s expertise in channels such as WhatsApp, Google Messages, and Line.

One particular focus for Toku is the opportunity in regional language processing.

“We have developed a comprehensive in-house transcription model trained on proprietary data and integrated with regional and local NLP (natural language processing) libraries,” Laboulle says. This model can handle languages and dialects like Malay and Singlish, which he says are often overlooked by Western offerings.

This collaboration is also expected to lead to the development of a “sophisticated voice bot that could revolutionize how businesses scale human-like customer engagement,” he added.