Yalo raises $50 mn funding led by existing venture investor B Capital Group

Yalo will use the financing to deepen its presence in Latin America and Southeast Asia

Yalo, the conversational commerce (c-commerce) platform previously known as Yalochat, has raised $50 million in a Series C round of financing, bringing total capital raised to date to $75 million. The round was led by existing venture investor B Capital Group, a venture capital firm co-founded by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

Yalo platform enables large enterprise businesses like Unilever, Nestle, Coca-Cola and Walmart to communicate and transact directly with consumers through messaging apps like WhatsApp.

Yalo, which has operations in India, US, Mexico and Brazil, will use the financing to deepen its presence in Latin America and Southeast Asia. It would also fund the development of new product offerings, including conversational marketing and payments solutions.

“Yalo has become the leading conversational commerce company, revolutionizing the way large enterprises engage with their customers and enabling them to transact through chat applications,” said Eduardo Saverin, who previously co-founded Facebook. “We have been impressed with their execution and are very pleased to expand our relationship with them by leading their Series C round.”

Conversational commerce allows businesses to sell products in a personalized way through messaging apps by bridging the proximity of the physical world with the convenience of digital commerce. According to a BCG report, c-commerce is already a $35 billion market with the potential to reach $130 billion by 2025 in emerging markets, where it represents 60 per cent of digital commerce and 8 out of 10 consumers are exposed to online shopping exclusively via c-commerce.

“We’ve seen significant sales uplift since initiating our conversational commerce partnership with Yalo,” said John Santa Maria, CEO of Coca Cola Femsa. “We now have close to half a million corner stores placing their orders with us through WhatsApp. Conversational commerce has quickly become a fast-growing and important commerce channel for us in several countries, and we’re excited to be working closely with Yalo.”

Yalo’s technology is platform-agnostic and can be embedded in any messaging app, making it extremely convenient for companies to be where customers are. Yalo’s conversational commerce platform, which includes marketing, helpdesk, and payments solutions, allows companies to run their most critical operations, such as sales, on top of messaging apps. With Yalo Studio, the company also allows non-developers and partners to create their own c-commerce applications.

“For a long time enterprise digital transformation has been synonymous with complexity; not anymore,” said Javier Mata, founder and chief executive officer of Yalo. “Conversational commerce is a simple technology solution that enables brands to meet end-users where they already are -- in their favourite mobile communication channels.”

Mata said the firm would use this round of financing to fund the development of new conversational commerce products. It would also add further value for our global customers by enabling them to retain their customer relationships and compete with e-commerce giants.

During the pandemic, Yalo enabled companies like Coca-Cola to shift offline commerce to conversational commerce, generating an increase in sales of more than 20 per cent. Similarly, Yalo helped retailer Sears increase its own conversion rate via c-commerce by 260 per cent. Driven by these customers’ success stories, last year Yalo recorded year-on-year revenue growth of 120 per cent. The company rapidly scaled its teams to serve customers across more than 41 countries.

Mata said conversational commerce is rapidly becoming e-commerce 2.0 by enabling brands to connect critical business systems with consumers on messaging apps, where they already spend 84 per cent of their phone time. 

“This is particularly in our core markets of Latin America, India and Southeast Asia. Yalo helps companies handle the customer relationship and the purchasing process end-to-end,” said Mata. “We are confident that conversational commerce global sales volume will outgrow e-commerce in the long run, and we’re very excited to be playing an integral role in that transformative growth for businesses worldwide.”