Some of Qiscus' Post Pivot "In-App Chat" Provider Startup Plans

Provider startup in-app chatQiscus announced a number of plans after the pivot in 2015. Some of them are targeting iconic startups with large market shares as users and raising new series A funding next year.

Startups engaged in online consulting, such as telemedicine, financial consulting, law, and education are some of the targeted users of Qiscus. This segment is predicted to have great potential and will continue to grow over time, both in Southeast Asia and Indonesia.

For its funding target, so far Qiscus has received two injections of funds from investors. In the early stages of US$100 thousand at the end of 2014. While the pre-series A stage, the value of the injection is kept secret, as are the investors.

"We are targeting to raise series A funding next year," said Qiscus Co-Founder and COO Muhammad MD Rahim, Wednesday (40/8).

Qiscus itself has actually been established since 2013, headquartered in Singapore and Jakarta, has around 35 employees. All developers are placed in Yogyakarta. However, the focus presented at the time is a team communication and collaboration solution by delivering a multiplatform messaging application for corporate clients.

"We did the pivot because the chat service could actually be more than what we were offering at the time. There were also many inputs from potential clients that actually inspired us to change the business," explained Qiscus Delta CEO and Co-Founder Purna Widyangga.

Currently, the service that Qiscus provides is to help companies utilize communication technology to virtualize their business and expand beyond physical boundaries. The product presented is a chat platform that supports Artificial Intelligence SDK (software development kits), sound and video technology.

For the time being, Qiscus has only provided three derivative services, namely customer engagement, workflow management & team communication, and remote consulting.

As for AI services, Qiscus is preparing to collaborate with Kata.ai and other AI engine providers so that client companies can use chatbot technology in Qiscus chat.

"Our position is that we do not develop chatbots, but work with other parties. We only focus on providing machines that make chatbots reliable when accessing Qiscus chat," said Delta.

Investation in-app chat expensive one

With the pivot, Qiscus has the flexibility to explore further the B2B chat service market share. The reason is, Indonesia is classified as the fifth largest Android application downloader country in the world last year.

Despite being the largest downloader, many vulnerable applications are only used for a short period of time because they are considered unable to interact with users. Therefore, the solution that is generally presented by application owners is to present features in-app real time communication (RTC) to increase interaction.

It's just that to provide these services requires investment and human resources that are not cheap. Indonesian people's expectations for chat messaging services are quite high, because they are quite familiar with applications with similar services scattered in cyberspace.

Qiscus made a rough calculation of the investment that must be made by a startup that wants to develop a chat messaging service in its application, which is estimated to be between US$35 thousand to US$390 thousand.

"Rather than recruiting developers to make in-app chat, we usually direct the company to focus on developers to develop the mainstay features that you want to add to the game in-app chat later," said Qiscus CTO Evan Purnama.

Pioneer players in Indonesia

Qiscus claims to be a pioneer company that provides services in-app chat on a B2B basis in Indonesia. Delta actually thinks that its biggest competitors are foreign players who offer their services to local companies.

Foreign players are still considered to have more established competencies. However, they have their own challenges, namely compatibility and flexibility issues that make it difficult to allocate resources for potential clients.

"While we understand the Indonesian market conditions and our technology is considered more stable, compatible, and flexible. So they can rely on it to meet their needs."

Several local startup companies that have become Qiscus users are Halodoc, Ruangguru, Doku, and Telkom Indonesia. Outside of Indonesia, there are several startups from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and South Africa that have been users.