Introduction

During the pandemic, globally there was a realization that traditional ways of operating models are unsustainable. Even if pandemic ends, risk of emergence of a similar virus exists. All major companies are already working on implementation of a hybrid working model. Hybrid working models will be the new normal but the basic human need to engage, meet and interact with humans is deep rooted. Thus with the advent of pandemic, video based solutions are fast becoming the normal way to communicate, whether it’s a business meeting, chatting with friends and family, or attending classes. But can it actually be used to give a boost to existing business, replace wide spread chatbots, and fill the gap for personal touch ? The answer to all those needs is Salesassist.ai founded by Deep, Ashish and Chetan. 

Deep Malik is the CEO and co-founder of the company who was the Group Project manager at Infosys for 12 years responsible for delivery of multiple Fortune 500 financial banks engagements . Ashish Nanotkar is the CTO who holds 13 years of experience and a proven track record as a DevOps Specialist and Transformation consultant for various companies like Seagate technology . Chetan Jangir is the COO  who has worked in IT Industry for 9+ years in organizations like GlobalLogic and Publicis Sapient .Thus these 3 experienced individuals came together to create SalesAssist which was born  to solve the problem of pre-fed chatbots and falling e-commerce business by engaging website visitor over 1:1 live video chat with customer success team and giving retail store like interactive & personalized shopping experience. Thus in an era where personalization became the need of the hour this unique solution to engage the customer could truly become a game changer in the industry .

Market Size

Global Conversational AI Market was valued at $3.89 Billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $18.02 Billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 21.02%. While the overall Indian e-commerce is expected to grow to $99 Billion by 2024 growing at over 27% CAGR . But across the globe last year, e-commerce businesses have lost $750 bn in sales because of poor personalization experience and average conversion ratio was at all time low of  2%. There are multiple billion dollar e-commerce businesses which require hi-touch service support , consultative discussion & visualization case in point Real Estate, Tour & Travel ,Luxury fashion but only 21% of customer service interactions are actually personalized and discussions contextualized. Thus a market filled with players having insignificant online presence with low level of personalization being the challenge,  provides a huge market opportunity .

Investment Thesis 

Today, we live in an age of live video conversations but current client engagement on e-commerce sites happens over phone, chat or email interfaces which are less interactive and engaging . Ecommerce sites are trying to solve the problem by adapting Chatbots . But mostly all Chatbots act as Support helpdesk and respond with pre-fed answers and secondly, customers need to type manually to get their queries answered . When we came across SalesAssist.ai we realized that their product offers a unique balance between conversational bot and live human interaction along with tools such as video messages, nudges etc at extremely affordable prices. They had B2B subscription revenue model which had 3 modules Limited, Basic and Pro .Limited module was free per agent per month mainly used as a promotional strategy but was limited to only 20 lead capture form submissions .Basic module was Rs.499 per agent/month which covered 200 lead capture forms with Realtime video/audio/text message capture along with call waiting and exit intents with video call schedules .Pro mode  was Rs.999 per agent/month and offered all the features in previous modules but also offered Co browsing ,file transfer, Queue visibility ,Auto recording etc. Now having a multi-tiered pricing model right at such an early stage convinced us of its ability to upsell,cross sell to existing customers and also target not just a niche set of customers but the wider range of players across the industries thus having the potential to form a horizontal leadership  .  They had made the platform very secure by providing client facial recognition. Additionally, the app-less and API based functionality made this product convenient in terms of accessibility as well. Having the flexibility via their API based functionality was the key to target sectors where integration still remains an issue  . They currently have great traction with over 10 major B2B clients already onboarded and multiple large e commerce clients like Shopify in their pipeline .Their new product which offers live commerce is about to be launched which we believe will truly be a game changer in the indian shopping space signs of which are already seen in other major Asian markets like China and Indonesia . But the most important part was this exceptional team showed  immense understanding of the market and capabilities . They had embed “Video driven Experience“ in every step of an online shopper’s journey thus providing an AI-based multi-channel live customer engagement solution for businesses.

Conclusion 

An experienced team with huge organic traction in the first year of working indicates the true need of the hour that is filled by this product. As Sanjay Mehta famously says ideas are of two kinds  pain killers and vitamins. We at 100X.VC feel that SalesAssist.ai could be the ultimate pain killer bringing the human touch into shopping.