Akosha raises Rs 100 crore in Series B funding led by Sequoia

Akosha, a messaging platform for all consumer-to-business interactions, has secured Rs 100 crore Series B round funding led by Sequoia Capital. 

This is the third round of investment in Akosha that is led by Sequoia, starting with a $200,000 seed investment in 2011.

The new financing will be used to hire over 200 software engineers and product managers to build out the platform, and fund the exponential growth of Akosha’s new mobile app for connecting users and businesses. 

In 2010, Akosha pioneered the model of a single destination for consumers to connect with any large business. 

Akosha handles 30,000+ consumer inquiries every day over the web, telephone and its Android chat app and monetises these inquiries by providing its enterprise software OneDirect to brands. 

Businesses are able to leverage Akosha’s software for a speedy and personalised interaction with their consumers. Over 130 large brands use Akosha’s OneDirect platform to respond to consumer inquiries every week. Around 30 of these enterprises have become paying customers who subscribe to a premium version of the OneDirect Enterprise Suite. Kotak Mahindra Bank, Voltas, Aircel, Snapdeal, Micromax and Makemytrip are some of the leading brands currently using Akosha OneDirect enterprise solutions.

As many as 140,000 users have downloaded Akosha’s new Android app in four months with an average rating of 4.5. Consumers use the app for product discovery, pricing information, discounts, customer service, booking appointments, and travel research, among other functions. Currently, the app supports more than 18,000 chat sessions daily, and is growing 20-25% week-on-week. 

Over the last year, the company has grown its employee base from 180 to well over 300 and recently opened a technology and product office in Bangalore. Building on this momentum, Akosha will use the additional financing to continue to expand its software engineering teams, accelerate product development, and invest in growing its user base. Akosha’s expects to add 400-500 people to its team this year.

Akosha was co-founded by Ankur Singla, a National Law School, Bangalore graduate who was moved by the poor quality of customer service in India. 

“We started 4 years ago to help consumers with post purchase issues. With the growth of mobile, we aim at building a messaging platform for all interactions between consumers and businesses including discovery, buying, appointments and customer service. We hope to be doing 100,000 customer interactions/day within 3 months."