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MoEngage lands $25M for its mobile-first customer engagement platform
MoEngage, a San Francisco and Bangalore-based startup that helps firms better understand their customers and improve their engagement, has raised $25 million in a new financing round as it looks to grow its network in North America and Europe.
The Series C was led by Eight Roads Ventures . F-Prime Capital, Matrix Partners India and Ventureast also participated in the round. The six-year-old startup, which is an Alchemist alum, has raised about $40 million to date.
MoEngage offers a product that allows clients to gain deeper insights into the way their customers or users are engaging with their apps and websites. “We can, for instance, tell at what time a customer is using the app,” said Raviteja Dodda, founder and chief executive of MoEngage, in an interview with TechCrunch.
These insights, all displayed on one dashboard, could be very useful for firms to retain their existing customers or find optimized ways to attempt to sell more to them.
“Based on your understanding about the customer, you can send them personalized notifications. Say you’re using a ride-hailing app. The firm would now know how often you use their app and at what time you tend to avail their service. Based on these learnings, they can offer you deals or reminders that could help them improve their conversion rate,” he said.
MoEngage today works with a number of major firms in North America, Europe and Asia. Some of its clients include Deutsche Telekom, CIMB Bank, Travelodge, Samsung, McAfee, Vodafone, retail chain Future Retail, ride-hailing service Ola, budget-hotel operator OYO, grocery delivery startup Bigbasket and music streaming service Gaana.
In total, Dodda said his startup has amassed “hundreds of clients” in over 35 countries and is serving more than 400 million active users for them each month.
“MoEngage, with its differentiated offering, scalable platform and a customer-first approach, will play an important role in enabling us to deliver contextual and relevant communications to our customers and drive higher customer lifetime value,” said Arun Srinivas, chief operating officer at Indian ride-hailing startup Ola, in a statement.
MoEngage, which competes with a handful of startups including India-based Clevertap, will infuse the fresh capital to find more customers in North America and Europe, and scale its product operations, said Dodda.
“What differentiates MoEngage from other engagement platforms is the combination of their ever-evolving AI-enabled customer journey capabilities, industry-best channel reachability and top-notch customer support. We are thrilled to partner with Raviteja and his team as they look to expand globally,” said Shweta Bhatia, Partner at Eight Roads Ventures.
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Indonesia’s ride-hailing giant Gojek launches video streaming service GoPlay
On-demand video streaming giant Netflix, which is increasingly expanding its footprint in developing markets, now has a new competitor in Indonesia: Gojek.
The Indonesian ride-hailing giant on Thursday launched a video streaming service called GoPlay that features exclusive access to “hundreds of movies and TV shows” as well as snackable short clips. The streaming service is currently available only in Indonesia.
The service, which Gojek began testing with select users in June, focuses on local content, Edy Sulistyo, CEO of GoPlay said. Gojek, which was valued at $9.5 billion in its last financing round, said it has partnered with major local production houses such as Base Entertainment, Kalyana Shira Films and Wahana Kreator for production of original titles. The firm said it has also tied up with some international studios to source foreign content.
“Despite a rise in demand for local content and a growing number of mobile audiences in Indonesia, access has still been limited especially for consumers living outside of urban areas. With GoPlay, we aim to enable all Indonesian consumers to enjoy high-quality on-demand entertainment at their convenience, while providing a platform for local content producers to showcase their creative work,” said Sulistyo in a statement.
Gojek is offering the video streaming service through two aggressively priced monthly plans: IDR 89,000 ($6.27), which offers access to the full catalog in HD; and IDR 99,000 ($7), which will additionally provide users with access to GoFood delivery vouchers.
GoPlay will compete with a range of streaming services such as Netflix, iFlix and Hooq. Netflix last year began testing a low-cost mobile-only plan in some developing markets, including Indonesia, to boost its presence in those nations. The global giant eventually launched the affordable tier in India earlier this year. A Netflix spokesperson told TechCrunch this week that it currently has no plans to expand the low-cost tier to other markets.
Like many other major firms in Southeast Asia, Gojek is increasingly bulking up its ridesharing platform to enter additional categories. Today, it offers an online payments service and a gaming platform. The firm began working on its video streaming service last year after it set up an in-house content studio.
Grab, Gojek’s archrival in Southeast Asian markets, and India’s Ola, have also expanded their offerings in recent years. While Grab, like Gojek, offers everything including a video streaming service, Ola launched a credit card in May.
Grab has a partnership with Hooq for its video streaming service. In the run up to GoPlay’s launch, Hooq CEO Peter Bithos told TechCrunch in an interview that Gojek lacks the reach Hooq maintains in Southeast Asian markets. “Gojek hasn’t been able to get to anything like the scale or reach that we’ve got,” he said.
About 125 million people in Indonesia, or half of the nation’s population, are currently online. Sulistyo said Gojek sees a lot of potential for GoPlay’s growth in the country.
Indonesia has emerged as one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia in recent years. According to a study conducted by Google and Singapore’s Temasek, Indonesia’s internet economy is estimated to be worth $100 billion by 2025.
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The savage genius of SoftBank funding competitors
Venture capitalists aren’t supposed to make their portfolio companies battle to the death. There’s a long-standing but unofficial rule that investors shouldn’t fund multiple competitors in the same space. Conflicts of interest could arise, information about one startup’s strategy could be improperly shared with the other, and the companies could become suspicious of advice provided by their investors. That leads to problems down the line for VCs, as founders may avoid them if they fear the firm might fund their rival down the line.
SoftBank shatters that norm with its juggernaut $100 billion Vision Fund plus its Innovation Fund. The investor hasn’t been shy about funding multiple sides of the same fight.
The problem is that SoftBank’s power distorts the market dynamics. Startups might take exploitative deals from the firm under the threat that they’ll be outspent whoever is willing to take the term sheet. That can hurt employees, especially ones joining later, who might have a reduced chance for a meaningful exit. SoftBank could advocate for mergers, acquisitions, or product differentiation that boost its odds of reaping a fortune at the expense of the startups’ potential.
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Uber bets on developing world growth with low-data Uber Lite
“The next hundreds of millions of riders for us are going to come from outside of the United States”, Uber’s head of rider experience Peter Deng tells me. The transportation giant already sees 75 million riders per month and 15 million rides per day. But to grow in the developing world, it had to rethink its app to work on the oldest phones and slowest networks. So Deng’s team traveled the globe asking people what they needed from Uber, but also what they didn’t.
The result is Uber Lite.
It’s launching today in India before rolling out to more countries, though there’s still a waitlist form instead of a download link. The Android app takes up just 5 megabytes. “You delete three selfies, you have room for Uber” Deng laughs. 300-millisecond response time means its quick to hail a ride, even for the 4 percent of users in India on sluggish 2G networks. And by streamlining the design and only showing maps by request, it won’t burn much data for users on a budget.
Uber needs to score growth in developing markets after retreating while cutting deals with local winner like Didi in China, Grab in Southeast Asia, and a forthcoming arrangement with Yandex in Russia. India’s Ola rideshare service already has a ‘Lite” app that’s just 1 megabyte and a 45% share of the taxi market, compared to Uber’s 35%. Uber has reported has talked with Ola about a possible merger in India, sources have told TechCrunch and others. With the country making up 10% of Uber’s rides, it’s a market it can’t forfeit.
To reach its full potential, Uber has to start out-competing homegrown competitors. Success with Uber Lite could give it leverage with Ola and path to gaining more of it around the world.
“We know we’re not just a U.S. company, we’re a global company. Not only have we built this for the world, it was built in India” Deng tells me. Deng came to Uber in March 2017 after 10 years at Facebook’s various companies. It was early to the “Lite” idea, with its shrunken app reaching over 200 million users.
But Deng says Uber Lite didn’t come from stripping down the main app, but building it up from scratch. “The team has traveled to markets around the world to do in home interviews to understand the needs of the customers.”
Compared to the 181 megabyte standard version, Uber Lite is a lot easier for low-storage phones to handle. Uber Lite launches not to a map or a text entry box, but instead a suggested nearby business or landmark based on your GPS. “You have to do less typing and can do more tapping” Deng explains. It also tries to guess your destination based on pre-cached popular city spots. You can input addresses, but Uber Lite won’t load a data-heavy map unless you purposefully grab for it. ‘Tap for map’.
Same goes for your driver’s ETA. After you’ve selected your vehicle type and hailed, you’ll just get a countdown to their arrival unless you tap to see them on their way. Payment for now is cash only. But soon Uber plans to add India’s popular Paytm payment platform and credit card options. It’s also still lacking notifications, which seem worth the data. More languages will come too.
Uber wouldn’t explain how, but it also revealed that it plans to offer offline hailing, possibly through some peer-to-peer Bluetooth mesh network or other technology. One other interesting test its running in India lets users punch in a code found at a bus stop to instantly hail a ride there. Another lets older or less phone savvy users phone in to an accessibility team that can hail a ride for them. It’s already offered web bookings. “The whole charter is to allow everyone around the world to experience Uber” Deng says.
What Uber wouldn’t skip in v1 was the in-app support and a way to share your ETA with loved ones so they can watch out for you. “We knew how important safety was in these markets. I’m really proud we took additional steps to empathize” Deng says.
The company is clearly trying to put the darker moments of its past behind it. While cynics might take the compassion talk as just lip service like the company’s big apology ad campaign, it’s also the reason some tech talent has stayed at or joined Uber. If the company is going to be unavoidable, making it secure and accessible is a pretty good reason to wake up in the morning.
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India’s tech bubble is about to burst
Editor’s note: Dileepan Siva is chief revenue officer at Moovweb. The Silicon Valley “tech bubble” is a popular topic of discussion among business pundits, entrepreneurs and analysts who have dissected and predicted the upcoming “burst” for nearly the last decade. For all the talk of winter is coming and a slowdown in private capital markets, it’s hard to… Read More
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