The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Nov 2020

FinChatBot is a Johannesburg-based AI fintech founded in 2016 that builds conversational AI solutions for financial service providers. Its platform addresses call-centre inefficiency by digitising customer interactions and connects with multiple operating systems and messaging channels including Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter. The company says clients can double conversion rates, reduce operational costs by more than 60%, retain customers better, and gather more customer data for product innovation. FinChatBot currently serves a number of large corporations. The startup plans to use new funding to expand into Europe and West Africa, hire roughly 50 employees across engineering, sales, and project management, and open offices in France, the UK, and Portugal. Its custom-built technology integrates with third-party providers and messaging channels to help clients generate revenue and drive business growth. FinChatBot develops AI-powered chatbots and an AI component that optimises conversation tone to improve user experience for financial services providers. The company serves chatbot experiences for more than 10 top insurance companies and banks in South Africa and says its bots increase conversion rates, reduce operational costs and enable product innovation through gathered customer data. Founders Antoine Paillusseau and Romain Diaz launched the startup in 2016; in September it had about 15 employees and was targeting growth of more than 300% in 2018. FinChatBot reports that its implementations save clients an average of 15 minutes per agent managing an online sale (valued at R34 per agent per sale). The team plans to use the investment to continue rapid growth and expand its client base, and the company is exploring predictive analytics as a next step in its chatbot technology.