Helpshift raises $10 million in Series A funding to bring CRM to mobile apps in this Post-PC era

Helpshift, the leading CRM for mobile apps, has announced that it has closed its Series A financing round of $10 million led by Intel Capital, Visionnaire Ventures and existing investors True Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners. In all, Helpshift has raised $13.2 million backed by Intel Capital, True Ventures, Visionnaire Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners. Susan Choe, managing partner at Visionnaire Ventures will be joining the Helpshift board.

Sharing his views, Abinash Tripathy, CEO, Helpshift

We’ve seen incredible global adoption of our platform among all parts of the app ecosystem, from games to m-commerce, to lifestyle apps. We’ve realized we have something that most mobile companies could benefit from and the only challenge for us has been the ability to scale to meet the explosive demand. This round of funding will enable us to attack each of these major mobile verticals and bring the benefits of Helpshift to thousands of app publishers.

In span of one year, Helpshift has been installed on more than 150 million devices and reduced incoming support tickets by more than 90 percent for leading companies including Supercell, Glu Mobile, Flipboard and other top app publishers. Helpshift is fast becoming the customer management platform for mobile publishers interested in increasing user engagement and lowering churn.

Speaking about the opportunities in mobile CRM, Taizo Son, co-founder, GungHo Online Entertainment Inc., and an L.P. of Visionnaire Ventures shared,

Mobile gaming is the most significant app economy today, and as a result, most customer centric innovation in mobile happens here. As a media executive and investor, Helpshift's machine learning based CRM technology allows leading gaming and m-commerce companies to focus their interactions with users in near tailored approach. Smart. So it's not surprising Helpshift is rapidly being adopted by the who’s-who of the gaming industry. And we, at Visionnaire Ventures, are backing Helpshift to continue growing their global footprint, while delivering great customer experiences.

The platform features a number of major benefits for app publishers and users by improving the customer experience, driving higher app ratings and user retention, and saving time and money in the support of Apps.

To climb to the top of the charts and stay relevant in the highly competitive world of mobile apps, companies need to communicate with their customers and directly engage with them in their apps. The biggest problem in the app economy today is that more than 90 percent of the users that download an app churn away in the first 90 days.

Helpshift provides a native mobile SDK that can be integrated into any mobile app to enable two-way communications, helping companies talk to their customers directly inside their apps. Higher engagement with users in-app improves the overall customer experience, and drives higher app store ratings and has been proven to reduce churn by 40 percent.

Read detailed Interview with Abinash Tripathy where he shares his entrepreneurial journey.

Just few days back, Google Capital has backed Freshdesk in a new round of funding led by Tiger Global, with Accel Partners participating. The $31 million Series D round will be used to accelerate Freshdesk’s global expansion, and brings the total investment to $44 million.

There will definitely be a lot more to hear from HelpShift in the days to come. Watch this space for more updates!