In 2017, Respond.io was founded to tackle a straightforward challenge: businesses were struggling to keep pace with customers who had shifted to messaging apps. Today, the company, which offers customer conversation management software, stands out as one of Malaysia's tech success stories. Based in Kuala Lumpur, it has secured a $62.5 million Series B funding round, led by Camber Partners, with additional backing from Endeavor Catalyst and existing investors. This follows a $7 million Series A round in 2022.

Co-founder and CEO Gerardo Salandra, who previously worked at IBM and Google before joining Runtastic—a fitness tracking app sold to Adidas in 2015—launched Respond.io in Hong Kong in 2017 alongside Hassan Ahmed (CTO) and Iaroslav Kudritskiy (COO). Two years later, the team relocated the business to Malaysia. The platform enables mid- to large-sized B2C companies to generate revenue from customer conversations across various messaging channels, including WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Messenger, Line, Telegram, WeChat, voice calls, and web chat. It also employs AI agents to automatically manage high volumes of customer inquiries, qualify leads, and close sales without human involvement.

Salandra describes the company's core customers as "high-consideration" businesses—sectors like healthcare, automotive, retail, education, and travel—where customers need to speak with someone before making a purchase. "You don’t go to a website, put your credit card, and buy a car; you chat with someone, you ask a lot of questions," he explains. The platform's ideal client base consists of companies with 200 to 10,000 employees.

The rise of AI has prompted an obvious question for platforms like Respond.io: Could tools like ChatGPT simply replace what they've built? Salandra believes his company's foothold is strong enough to fend off such encroachment, should it occur. The platform currently processes 2 billion messages per quarter. "We are not seeing what the public SaaS markets are seeing," he notes.

Part of this resilience stems from Respond.io's pricing model. Unlike enterprise software competitors that charge per seat, Respond.io charges based on the volume of customer conversations, meaning it doesn't matter whether a human or an AI is answering. "When fewer humans use your product, they make less money," Salandra says. "But we don’t charge like that."

The incumbent platforms, particularly those dominant in North America and Europe, were built around email and phone calls. "The platforms that exist, they bolted on messaging as a second thought. They’re very email focused, they’re very call focused, but when it comes to messaging, it’s an afterthought," Salandra explains. This volume of message data creates a feedback loop, according to the CEO: more messages lead to better AI, better AI attracts more customers, and more customers generate more messages. "This is what we call the data flywheel," he says. He adds that this head start matters for any upstart AI company. "Because we started so long ago and we have such a strong foundation, we can provide better AI compared to someone who just entered into the messaging space."

With the new capital, Salandra says the company plans to pursue hiring, organic growth, and acquisitions. The CEO has two types of buying targets in mind: bolt-on technology that fits into its existing ecosystem, and established teams with strong customer bases in strategic markets like Europe and North America. "Imagine how many months I can save if I find the right company that maybe already has the clients and the team," he says. "I can save myself six months to a year through an acquisition." He confirms the company is already in talks with a couple of potential targets.

This geographic push makes strategic sense. Respond.io currently generates roughly 30% of its revenue from APAC, 30% from Latin America, and 20% from the Middle East and Africa, leaving North America and Western Europe at just 20%. However, Salandra says those regions are now its fastest-growing. "They took longer to make the change, but now they’re moving very rapidly into messaging channels," he notes, adding that he expects both regions to become the company's largest segment within two to three years.

Despite the fresh injection of capital, Salandra is cautious about what comes next. "We don’t want to be a growth at all costs company," he says. "Even with this money, we’re going to be very disciplined." But Salandra has bigger plans in mind. "My favorite outcome," he says, "ringing the bell at Nasdaq."