Cooby announces US$2.9 Million funding to re-imagine sales engagement and inbox productivity for WhatsApp and LINE

Conversation management tool Cooby today announced that they have raised US$2.9 million to date led by Sequoia India’s Surge and Pear VC. In a messaging-first world, the tool helps businesses streamline engagement and individuals to organise their customer conversations and boost inbox productivity.

With over two billion active users across the globe, WhatsApp is one of the world’s most popular apps. An increasing number of sales teams are using the platform to engage new prospects and existing clients. Sales conversations happen through messaging apps because customers prefer more collaborative and real-time communication. Businesses understand this, but many struggle to engage their leads and existing clients through WhatsApp and other messaging platforms. They grapple with issues like data ownership, transparency, visibility, activity tracking and legal protection due to the lack of data integration on WhatsApp. 

Cooby equips these teams with WhatsApp work number setup, data sync, analytics dashboard,  alerts and notifications, and collaboration interface to regulate WhatsApp and enhance their sales. The company also provides visibility to customer conversations and sales activities on a unified platform. Cooby Workspace makes collaboration on WhatsApp possible without all the back-and-forths, aggregate all customer contacts, and provides clear and actionable analytics that enables teams to track, improve and grow.

Cooby’s team management solution provides full transparency into WhatsApp and LINE, enabling a smooth flow of data, information, and feedback that empowers each and every level of the sales organisation to evolve and achieve greater results. 

Individuals are also able to organise their inboxes and supercharge their WhatsApp with Cooby Extension for free. With the extension, they are able to create custom tabs according to their needs, schedule events, set reminders, take down notes, and so much more. These features enable them to achieve inbox-zero and boost overall inbox productivity.

“Since October 2021, we have expanded our customer base to Germany, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and the US. Additionally, in the last three months, we’ve seen the user base of our WhatsApp inbox productivity Chrome extension grow by 350%, and it is now being used in 80+ countries. We look forward to further strengthening our Cooby Workspace product with the funds raised, on top of expanding our team to countries like Singapore and other parts of the world” said Wen Shaw, CEO and Co-founder of Cooby.

Individuals have shared positive feedback on Cooby’s Extension, while businesses have also reviewed the product favourably, commending the convenience it provides. Pascal Lammers, the Head of Digitisation of Mission Mittelstand GmbH said “Cooby has created a huge impact in our coaching team as they are now able to easily navigate through their inboxes and work effectively. Features like the tabs, mentions, and mark all as read have saved us at least 20% of time spent on WhatsApp. We recommend Cooby to any business using WhatsApp for sales and customer support."

Cooby was founded in November 2020 by Jocelin Ho and Wen Shaw in Taiwan. Ho graduated from Stanford with a Master's in Electrical Engineering and most recently, worked as a Tech Lead at Instagram and Facebook. Her previous experience includes roles at Google, Ericsson and Gogolook. An alumnus of Columbia University, Shaw has worked as a Product Manager at Facebook, Dropbox along with other experiences at IBM, Touch of Modern and Percolata.

Cooby is part of Surge's sixth cohort of 20 companies that build fresher, smarter solutions to help consumers and businesses adapt to a changing world.