Taiwan-based conversation management tool Cooby announced Tuesday that it has raised $2.9 million to date led by Sequoia India’s Surge and Pear VC.

“Since October 2021, we have expanded our customer base to Germany, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and the United States. Additionally, in the last three months, we’ve seen the user base of our WhatsApp inbox productivity Chrome extension grow by 350 percent, and it is now being used in 80+ countries. We look forward to further strengthening our Cooby Workspace product with the funds raised, on top of expanding our team to countries like Singapore and other parts of the world” Cooby Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Wen Shaw.

Cooby was founded in November 2020 by Jocelin Ho and Wen Shaw in Taiwan. Ho graduated from Stanford with a Master’s in Electrical Engineering and most recently, worked as a tech lead at Instagram and Facebook. Her previous experience includes roles at Google, Ericsson and Gogolook. An alumnus of Columbia University, Shaw has worked as a Product Manager at Facebook, Dropbox along with other experiences at IBM, Touch of Modern and Percolata.

Cooby is part of Surge’s sixth cohort of 20 companies that build fresher, smarter solutions to help consumers and businesses adapt to a changing world. It is Surge’s first startup founded and based in Taiwan.

Cooby is a conversation management solution for WhatsApp and other business messaging channels. The company re-imagines sales management for a messaging-first world by building the best-in-class engagement and team management solutions on top of popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and LINE. In a messaging-first world, it helps businesses streamline engagement and individuals to organize their customer conversations and boost inbox productivity.

With over two billion active users across the globe, WhatsApp is one of the world’s most popular apps. An increasing number of sales teams are using the platform to engage new prospects and existing clients. Sales conversations happen through messaging apps because customers prefer more collaborative and real-time communication. Businesses understand this, but many struggle to engage their leads and existing clients through WhatsApp and other messaging platforms. They grapple with issues like data ownership, transparency, visibility, activity tracking and legal protection due to the lack of data integration on WhatsApp.

Cooby equips these teams with WhatsApp work number setup, data sync, analytics dashboard, alerts and notifications, and collaboration interface to regulate WhatsApp and enhance their sales. The company also provides visibility to customer conversations and sales activities on a unified platform. Cooby Workspace makes collaboration on WhatsApp possible without all the back-and-forths, aggregate all customer contacts, and provides clear and actionable analytics that enables teams to track, improve and grow.

Cooby’s team management solution provides full transparency into WhatsApp and LINE, enabling a smooth flow of data, information, and feedback that empowers each and every level of the sales organisation to evolve and achieve greater results.

Individuals are also able to organize their inboxes and supercharge their WhatsApp with Cooby Extension for free. With the extension, they are able to create custom tabs according to their needs, schedule events, set reminders, take down notes, and so much more. These features enable them to achieve inbox-zero and boost overall inbox productivity.

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