Helpshift Brings Customer Service To Mobile And Announces $3.2M Seed Financing

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Oct 30, 2012, 12:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Helpshift (www.helpshift.com), the first company to truly address the growing need in mobile for customer service, announced today its product offering and a recently closed seed financing round of $3.2M led by True Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121030/SF02283)

Helpshift Demonstration Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcguhNUrHbc

"True Ventures invests in promising founders who are building for the markets of the future. The proliferation of mobile apps has changed how companies interact with their customers, and customer service must evolve beyond the traditional model. With its in-app customer support solution, Helpshift is creating an entirely new customer service model for today's mobile ecosystem," said Phil Black, founding partner at True Ventures.

Helpshift's mobile solution is offered as a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and is hosted in the cloud. The Company currently provides support for Apple devices (iOS) and HTML5 and is committed to being cross platform.

Helpshift provides a native SDK that integrates with mobile applications to provide a seamless "in-app" customer support experience. The support screens can be customized to match the apps visual style. Unlike traditional web-based solutions shoehorned into mobile applications, Helpshift is designed to be instantly searchable and available even when a device is not connected to any network (offline).

"Our early customers indicated that more than 80 percent of inbound customer enquiries were for common issues that already had solutions published in Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's). Currently FAQ's are not searchable, and given the smaller mobile form factor, mobile users opt to submit a ticket instead of browsing through pages of content on their device," said Helpshift co-founder and CEO Abinash Tripathy. "In stark contrast to legacy customer service tools that focus on ticketing efficiency and address only the symptoms of the problem, we are focused on reducing overall ticket volume with proactive support and addressing the root of the problem."

The solution includes a familiar, in-app mobile messaging experience for users to communicate via short messages about problems they are facing. Detailed, device-specific diagnostics and screenshots can be sent inline with these messages, which enables a customer service representative to quickly and intelligently address customer issues from the Helpshift dashboard in real-time.

"At Nexus Ventures we look to back exceptional entrepreneurs building category leading companies. Abinash and team at Helpshift are doing just that, by offering a data-driven platform for customer service uniquely tailored to the native mobile experience," said Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners.

About Helpshift
Helpshift is redefining how companies handle customer service on mobile. Today's customers must have a mobile-specific experience on their smartphones and tablets -- shoehorning old email/web ticketing, knowledge-base, or telephone support systems does not work in this pivotal new channel. Helpshift is the support help desk which increases app rankings, reduces overall support time, and retains customers. To learn more about Helpshift, visit www.helpshift.com.

About True Ventures
Founded in 2006, True Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology startups. With three funds and approximately $600 million in capital under management, True provides seed and Series A funding to the most talented entrepreneurs in today's fastest growing markets. With more than 100 companies funded and multiple companies acquired, the True portfolio has created more than 1,900 jobs. To learn more about True Ventures, visit www.trueventures.com.

About Nexus Venture Partners
Nexus Venture Partners (www.nexusvp.com) is India's leading venture capital fund, with offices in India and Silicon Valley. Nexus team consists of entrepreneurs and corporate executives, who have founded and scaled large global companies. The team has invested in a variety of companies leading to numerous successful public offerings and M&A transactions. It has over $600mn under management with an active portfolio of over 40 companies across technology, Internet, media, consumer, and business services sectors. The Nexus team plays an active role in helping entrepreneurs and management teams build market leading businesses. Nexus partner companies include Cloud.com (Cloud provisioning platform acquired by Citrix), Gluster (Open source cloud storage, acquired by Red Hat), Pubmatic (Publisher Ad revenue optimization), DimDim (Open Source Web Conferencing acquired by Salesforce.com), Snapdeal.com (Ecommerce), MapMyindia (Digital Navigation), Netmagic (Managed Services and Cloud infrastructure provider, acquired by NTT), Komli (Online ad network), Prana (Animation services), Druva (computing End-point protection), Unmetric (Social media analytics for business applications) and Bigshoebazaar (Online wholesale cash & carry platform).

SOURCE Helpshift