2019 has started and we already know that it is going to be a very special year for our chatbot company. That’s because in January, we have secured a two million Euro investment from DayOne Capital and PortfoLion Ventures. We will use this investment to develop enterprise chatbots and to grow our business to Central Europe and Southeast Asia.
We did not rest for a second. Instead, we found a great new colleague, Péter Illésy, who will greatly help to develop our chatbot company: Péter represents our interests in Poland as a Business Development Manager. He has experience in product management and business development. In addition, he knows the Polish market very well. With his collaboration, our plan is to grow faster in the CEE region and develop chatbots.
Zoli (on the left) and Péter (on the right) doing business
At the end of January, Ákos and Zoli visited Warsaw. They held several talks and meetings and had discussions with prospective clients and partners there. Talk-A-Bot, our enterprise chatbot company, also went to the Embassy of Hungary. Last but not least – as a Microsoft co-sell partner – we visited the local office of Microsoft.
Ákos-Zoli @Deutsche Post DHL
Besides Poland, our second main target country is Germany. In Berlin, we have negotiated with potential partners and held a successful product presentation in the centre of one of the biggest global companies, Deutsche Post DHL. Finally, a quick story to grasp just how determined we are: the unstoppable duo of Ákos and Zoli managed to get from Berlin to Bonn – after they missed their flight. (Note: big thanks to the great railway network between the two)
January 4th, 2019, Budapest, Hungary – Talk-A-Bot, the Hungarian based chatbot startup, secured a two million Euro investment.
The enormous support from DayOne Capital and PortfoLion Ventures will be used to develop enterprise chatbots. Moreover, for business expansion to Central Europe and Southeast Asia. The investment follows Talk-A-Bot’s participation in the Rakuten Accelerator powered by Techstars program.
With the 2 million Euro investment from DayOne and PortfoLion Ventures, Talk-A-Bot aims to further develop market-leading chatbot solutions. Furthermore, to strengthen its business expansion from Singapore to reach the larger Southeast Asia region.
“Market demand for a two-way communication tool that can be used for interacting in both individual and mass level is rapidly growing… Companies in emerging markets, such as Central Europe and Southeast Asia, are in the hunt for innovative solutions to raise their competitiveness. Talk-A-Bot offers well-targeted use cases based on cutting-edge AI components. We managed to grow from zero in the last two and a half years based only on real market demand and client revenues. This investment gives us a chance to grow faster and innovate forward-thinking market-leading new products.”
– said Ákos Deliága, Co-Founder of Talk-A-Bot.
Target Markets for Chatbot Companies
The other main market for Talk-A-Bot is Central Europe. The company has already collaborated with international brands like Erste Bank, Heineken, Bosch and Nestlé in the area. There is a big demand for excellent chatbots. In contrast, very few companies are able to meet the needs of major enterprises. In the next two years, Talk-A-Bot plans to start operations in key target markets including Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, and the Netherlands.
“We are very excited by this opportunity, by the technology and the team Talk-A-bot has brought together that will make them the opportunity to be reckoned not only in the CEE region but worldwide also”
-said Jenő Nieder, Deputy CEO of PortfoLion Ventures.
“In the coming years, businesses will seek dedicated platforms to empower and track automated AI-powered customer experience and enterprise communication… Talk-A-Bot’s strong technology and forward-looking strategy positions them well to become one of the key players in this market.”
-said Csaba Kákosy, Managing Partner at Day One Capital.
Talk-A-Bot
Among Talk-A-Bot’s clients are Central Europe’s largest commercial banks as well as utility providers, manufacturers, and media companies. Increased employee and customer engagement through consistent responses and proactive interactions with less pressure on staff resources; these are the key values of AI-based engagement tools. Communication between brands and their customers should be as personal and direct as talking to friends and family. Talk-A-Bot truly believes this statement and designs chatbots that fulfil this vision.
As chatbots are in high demand, these AI-based messaging software solutions are attracting strong interest from companies that are exploring new and innovate solutions for customer care, sales, marketing and automation of internal communication with employees.
After the strong interest during 2016, the chatbots market is now focusing on developing tools for users with tangible business efficiency. According to data from Facebook IQ, the activity of chatbots discussion in a period from January 2017 to January 2018 grew 5.6 times. Corporations that seek efficient ways of communication with their stakeholder groups are now realizing the benefits and potential of reachable digital tools such as chatbot.
“The key values of these AI-based tools are increased employee or customer engagement”
– Talk-A-Bot designs chatbots that fulfil this vision.
Ákos Deliága, Co-Founder of Talk-A-Bot at the Rakuten Accelerator powered by Techstars Demo Day in Singapore during October 2018.
Another One
Talk-A-bot’s launch was assisted by iLab programme run by the Central European University in Hungary. It is also a Preferred Enabling Partner of Rakuten Viber. Its uniqueness originates from the framework’s flexibility to be seamlessly integrated with different enterprise systems. Additionally, it has support for more than 100 languages and GDPR compliance.
In October 2018, the company revealed its first standardized product Cheq at the Rakuten Accelerator powered Techstars Demo Day in Singapore. Cheq, developed to operate on the Rakuten Viber voice and messenger platform, is an innovative internal communications tool that bridges the communication gap between contract workers, employees and employer by utilizing social chat in a secure way.
Talk-A-Bot has increased its revenues by 400% in the last two years. The chatbot company has plans in the pipeline to develop 2-3 more standardized products besides Cheq.
Ákos Deliága, Co-Founder of Talk-A-Bot at the Rakuten Accelerator powered by Techstars Demo Day in Singapore during October 2018.
About Talk-A-Bot
Talk-A-Bot is an enterprise chatbot provider based in Budapest, Hungary. Established in 2016, the company’s purpose is to provide chatbot solutions for corporate clients as well as major brands. Chatbots are relatively new communication tools. Despite that, Talk-A-Bot already has 20+ prestigious clients: over 2 million users use our products internationally.
About Day One Capital
Day One Capital is a leading early-stage venture capital firm based in Budapest. It manages 3 early-stage funds focusing on technology startups with exceptional founders who strive for global ambitions. Founded in 2011, over its 8-year operation, Day One Capital has built a portfolio across Central Eastern Europe. Moreover, its areas include autonomous driving, SaaS, medical technology and robotics verticals among many others.
About Portfolion
PortfoLion is the private equity and venture capital arm of OTP Group, Hungary’s largest banking corporation. Through its funding it partners with companies across multiple stages to help them expand and realize their growth potential. For more information visit www.portfolion.hu.
About Rakuten Accelerator powered by Techstars
The Rakuten Accelerator powered by Techstars is a 3-month mentorship-driven program for early-stage entrepreneurs. Through this, the companies are able to fast-track their growth story by leveraging Rakuten and Techstars resources and global networks.
Our enterprise chatbot provider company is getting on the next level indeed! From the 16th of July, Talk-A-Bot is participating in the Rakuten Accelerator Program, powered by Techstars. What’s more, the programme takes place in Southeast Asia, Singapore. Each year, 300 lucky companies are chosen to join their three-month mentorship-driven accelerator. This year, one of them is Talk-A-Bot: Singapore is waiting for us!
About the accelerator programme
Rakuten, a global leader in internet services, is collaborating with Techstars in a joint accelerator programme. Together they will help early-stage entrepreneurs who are advancing social messaging technologies. They invest $120K and provide hands-on mentorship, too. In addition to all this, they grant access to the Techstars Network for life. The focus is on the Viber application. This mentorship-driven accelerator will revolutionize how businesses and consumers use messaging: both to conduct business and to stay connected. Areas considered for the programme include:
AI based chatbots
chat commerce
mobile wallet and cryptocurrency
ad tech
VR and AR solutions
voice and image recognition
translation
content such as music and sports
chat-based IoT
enterprise integrated messaging.
This is Rakuten’s and Techstar’s first Accelerator Programme in Southeast Asia. The new programme will help to grow their existing community in the region, where Startup Programs have been active since 2010.
Singapore Marina Bay
Valuable support and resources: Rakuten Viber
Techstars’ worldwide network is connected with more than 10,000 mentors, partners, investors, and founders. Participants will also have access to resources from across Rakuten’s global ecosystem of more than 70 services. These include Rakuten Viber messaging and voice platform. With hundreds of millions of users around the world, Viber also recently became the official communication channel of FC Barcelona, Official Instant Messaging and Calling App Partner of the Golden State Warriors and an official platform for the National Basketball Association.
Finally, the 3-month intensive programme will conclude with a Demo Day. On this occasion, the participants will pitch their businesses to hundreds of investors from all over the world. Over the past 10 years, Techstars has helped over 1,274 companies grow and raise over $4.4 billion in funding, with a market cap of $11.4 billion.
There’s an often-repeated statistic that 90 percent of startups fail. It may be just a myth, but there’s no doubt that it scares entrepreneurs. On the contrary, they see the reverse in their accelerator portfolio at Techstars: 90 percent of their startups are active or have successfully exited. Talk-A-Bot is ready to support Techstars’ statistics. Let’s see how we move forward on the path! This is a major opportunity for startups like Talk-A-Bot – Singapore, here we come!
There are 2.2 billion people without a company e-mail address or any other digital communication channel to their employer. Let us introduce our new product, which is the right tool to bridge the communication gap between physical workers and their employers. Cheq by Talk-A-Bot has arrived.
Communicating online in many places and in many industries is still the future. We don’t really think about it, but that’s the harsh truth. We use dozens of IT tools in our work on a daily basis. But what about all the physical workers? They’re stuck in the past of poor management communication. Despite the fact that they all have smartphones. As a matter of fact, there are more smartphones sold than toothbrushes. So why are we not using digital technology to communicate with every worker? Cheq by Talk-A-Bot can bridge the communication gap between physical workers and the company.
Farmers usually have a problem with instantly communicating with temporary workers when weather conditions change. In such situations, they need to reach 150 workers one by one. And that takes a LOT of time. Cases like this made us realize that blue-collar or physical workers don’t have a corporate communication tool in the digital space. Lack of information leads to expensive fluctuation and loss of productivity.
Think about all the people that work in the automotive, pharmaceuticals, logistics industries. This is an underserved market that adds up to 2.2 billion people. Furthermore, there are 2.2 billion people without a company e-mail address or any other digital communication channel by their employer.
Talk-A-Bot built the right tool for them. TechStars and Rakuten helped us to conduct research on 3 continents with owners, managers, supervisors and regular workers of our target customers. As we found out, they all wanted the same: fast, simple, digital communication.
Talk-A-Bot’s solution: Cheq
Cheq is the right tool to bridge the communication gap between physical workers and their employers. Workers receive real-time, reliable information from their employer from the supervisors and not only verbally. Let’s consider major floodings, for instance. In cases like that, one must update hundreds of workers regularly updated regarding working hours in order to maximize production. Or we can take a small issue like a bus breakdown when a company needs to quickly reach 30-40 people. Such announcements can be sent out easily to a target group and the responses are reported live.
Workers can finally make themselves heard too. Cheq provides a structured, controlled way of bottom-up communication like:
Requesting leave or payslips
On-demand internal policy documents
Reporting of hazards, or even sensitive personal issues like abuse
Chat involvement in enterprise communication is inevitable. We built the right tool to make chat a structured, official channel. Our technology is built for enterprise clients from the ground up. We offer GDPR compliance, security, performance, and multiple integrations out of the box. Moreover, content and reporting are customizable based on local culture and processes. The best thing about our pricing is that even the smallest clients get all the features.
The past couple of weeks were really exciting in the Techstars and Rakuten accelerator program. Each team presented what idea and purpose they had. Then, based on their startup profiles, they received flight tickets to three different countries. Talk-A-Bot went to San Francisco!
After a 15 hours direct flight Talk-A-Bot arrived in the States and in San Francisco. Our primary goal was to meet as many company leaders as possible. The HQ’s café on the first floor was the most suitable place to meet. We talked to Djamel Agaoua, the global leader of Viber. Also, to Stuart Simms, the marketing CEO of Rakuten US. And last but not least, to Yaz Lida, the president of Rakuten US. We also had the opportunity to meet and pitch for Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten Viber.
The timing was just perfect. Talk-A-Bot and the other two startup CEO were selected for the Rakuten Optimism. Rakuten Optimism is the first global conference of Rakuten. All of the “Japanese Amazon” 70 business lines were presented in the program. Besides many prestigious branches, the most prominent one, the American EBATES, which joined the Rakuten family in 2014. The popular company guarantees credit to its registered customers after every online purchase. In cash.
The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium was an excellent venue for the event. The high-quality opening and the performances were in the concert hall. On the other hand, the reception was in front of the auditorium, directly at Grove Street. The one-day meeting program featured key players such as Mike Brown and Jordan Bell, the famous NBA Golden State Warriors team coach, David Alpert, the producer of Walking Dead and of course Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten.
Rakuten’s vision and the reception
In his speech, Mickey highlighted Rakuten’s vision and the next new development steps. All 40,000 dealers in Ichiba, Japan’s largest e-commerce store, will have their own Japanese speaking chatbot. He also emphasized that chat and chatbots are now a part of every business or commercial application. Forbes’ choice of the top 20 most innovative companies in 2002 continued to keep pace with its fast growth rate. The best example was Curbside, best in offline-online conversion, which had been bought up for $ 100 million recently.
At the reception, we met a gentleman by chance who was sitting at the closest table. After a few sentences, it turned out that he was one of the best neurosurgeons in the United States. In addition, he was the husband of Mickey’s cousin. In our more than 2 hour conversation, we talked about so many things. Singapore, the famous Hungarian Tokaj wines, his book about aging, and of course the secrets of Mickey’s success.
When everyone finished dinner, we took our places at the Auditorium. Hundreds of famous performers had shows there, such as Kiss, U2 and Madonna. Now Shakira dazzled the audience. The fantastic pop star appeared full in gold and has shown the album, El Dorado, supported by Rakuten. Besides the new songs, we got to hear the well-known classic hits. Our night was truly once in a lifetime. We liked to move it move it for Waka-waka! 😉
Talk-A-Bot’s 12 weeks incubation is coming to an end. On the Closing Day, the 10th of October Talk-A-Bot will announce its new product developed during the program to more than 70 VCs invited to the elegant closing event. Talk-A-Bot had a blast in San Francisco!
It is difficult to describe the feelings that Talk-A-Bot has experienced since July. We are among the top 10 in Techstars’ first Southeast Asian accelerator program. Which is quite impressive, as it has 480 companies from 38 countries around the world. In this blog post, Talk-A-Bot will share their experiences about Rakuten and Techstars. We will show you the structure of the program, starting with the Mentor Madness part!
Rakuten Techstars and the Japanese mentality
Being a Techstars backed company is not just a new period in the life of Talk-A-Bot. Rakuten Techstars offers a huge international opportunity to open new markets and dimensions to the company. It’s fascinating to see this organization with a Japanese mentality where respect and orderly manner are the main values. In fact, Rakuten employees start their week by cleaning their own table and wiping the chair’s legs in the office. Yes, even the 7th richest man in Japan, the CEO as well.
About Rakuten and the Techstars accelerator program
Techstars is a worldwide, well-known and excellent organization. It has connections with over 10,000 mentors who kindly offer their helping with strategy-building. Talk-A-Bot, in return, believes it is able to be the best enterprise chatbot provider not only in Hungary but internationally. Good pairing, huh? The schedule of the program is pretty busy. There are no empty passes, you have to hit the iron until it’s hot. This is also typical in the startup world. At that very moment, you have to be there and make the best of it. After the introductions and acquaintances, the program began. For over three full weeks, more than 60 mentors waited to get acquainted with 10 startups from 10 countries around the world. They were all selected by Techstars.
Techstars Mentor Madness
During the “Mentor Madness” period, every company had only half an hour to tell their message and get a reply on the spot. Our mentors from all over the world travelled to Singapore to help emerging companies. Before the mentor meetings, we got the main information about the mentors. Things like the names of the mentors, the exact location and time, and a link to the mentors’ curriculum vitae. Ákos, of course, studied the professional life and publications of the mentors all day long previously. Because of that, they could easily connect to each other.
During the days and then weeks you could share any topic or question with them. The catch was: you only had 30 minutes. On the other hand, it did not matter if your field was unfamiliar to the mentors. Everyone should be able to understand your innovation and ask questions from their own point of view. Then there were those 3-4 really relevant mentors whose advice was really made of gold. One of the mentors was absolutely committed to the program. The following day that Ákos introduced the sketch of our latest product, the mentor brought his own housekeeper to the office, with whom Ákos could conduct a product development interview.
This dynamism lasted throughout the program and we loved every moment of it. After the Mentor Madness, each team could choose lead mentors who will be closely involved in team life. Not only during the program but even beyond. Talk-A-Bot’s lead mentors will be Michael Shmilov, Viber COO and Haruna Tanaka, head of the Strategic and Planning Bureau of Rakuten HQ. Our next post will be about the workshop weeks, where Techstars shares its know-how to the participants. Stay tuned! In the meantime, read our other Talk-A-Bot blogpost about the Rakuten Techstars program!
