WhatsApp has long since moved beyond its origins as a straightforward messaging service for friends and is now a vital tool for companies looking to reach their clients directly, both physically and figuratively speaking. The parent firm of WhatsApp has taken notice of the fact that countless businesses are using the ubiquitous messaging service to lay the groundwork for their operations.
Youmin Kim, a former Facebook engineering manager who left the social network last year to work on a new product that promises to bridge the digital divide for small-business owners in Southeast Asia, founded the Singaporean startup Take App. Meta Platforms Inc., the corporate megabrand behind Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, recently invested in taking App.
Take App’s primary function is to provide users with minimal technological expertise with a straightforward method to put up a website for online purchases, complete with a shopping cart, payment processing, and a direct link to WhatsApp for monitoring and tracking the final transaction.
The Take App service primarily targets restaurants, but it also partners with bakeries, grocery stores, and beauty parlours, among other establishments.
According to Kim, who spoke to TechCrunch, “Our unique selling point is that we enable businesses to have direct WhatsApp chats with clients.” “Merchants adore the concept that no additional app or login is necessary; they receive notifications and order data straight in WhatsApp.”
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The firm offers several paid services, including sophisticated analytics, unlimited picture uploads, and custom domain names, in addition to the free core Take App service.
At the beginning of the epidemic, Kim founded Take App as a non-profit to assist small Singaporean eateries in accepting online orders, but he soon recognised there was a large possibility to transform this into a for-profit business. Currently, the company says that 1,000 enterprises from 35 different markets have utilised Take App, but the majority are situated in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
As part of the accelerator’s Winter 22 class, Take App also just graduated from Y Combinator (YC), which prompted YC to invest in the business as part of a $1 million investment with Meta and an unnamed group of angel investors. This initial capital round was surreptitiously concluded back in June.
Take App is an offshoot of other firms with a similar business model, such as Charles, located in Germany, which just secured $20 million to expand conversational commerce — and newsletters — to WhatsApp in Europe. It is tough to overlook the similarities, but Kim insists that Take App was created with simplicity in mind for a very particular kind of business in a very particular region of the world.
The most popular commercial communication method in Southeast Asia is WhatsApp, but operating it is expensive since staff members must reply to numerous discussions, as Kim told TechCrunch. There are ‘western’ CRM solutions that can make this more effective, but our merchants find them to be prohibitively expensive or challenging. We prioritise conventional companies that have a digital gap.
