Korean startup Sendbird, based out of San Francisco-area has received $52 million in Series B investment. The startup provides messaging solutions to businesses with the chat API application.
Iconiq Capital leads the way
The latest round of investment comes from Iconiq Capital. The startup also got funds from existing investors Shasta Ventures, August Capital, Y Combinator and Funders Club. With the latest investment Sendbird’s cumulative fund is about $71 million, since 2016 when the company graduated from Y Combinator. Matt Jacobson, General Partner at ICONIQ, joins the Board of Directors.
“It’s an important milestone for our team and I’m deeply grateful to work with the talented people who have brought us to now.
And I can’t wait to collaborate with all those to come,”
the company stated on their blog.
Sendbird currently supports over one billion messages every month, each one supporting the business goals of nearly 12,000 applications worked on, in part, by community of 50,000 developers trying SendBird’s API in 153 different countries.
The company has partnered some prestigious clients in the past year, like the NBA, Yahoo! Sports, Hinge, and Glu Mobile in the US; Yell, Virgin Mobile, and Wargaming in EMEA; GoGoVan, Ruangguru, HappyFresh, and Dream11 in Southeast Asia and India; and SNOW in Korea.
The startup plans to invest in two key areas with the latest funding.
1. Aim to build the No. 1 Chat API
The company aims to build an absolute best product in the market. It a will be hiring more talent, review customer experience, develop more SDK and API features to build on, and support customers responsively and effectively.
2. Scale their go-to-market globally
The startup already has multiple offices around the world — San Mateo as global headquarters and Seoul, Korea as our APAC office. Sendbird is building teams in parts of the world. The startup wants to build on customer support 24/7.
http://koreatechtoday.com/koreatechdesk/korean-startup-sendbird-is-becoming-the-most-scalable-chat-api-in-the-world/
