Saas firm Bitespeed raises $1.9M in a Seed round led by Sequoia India’s Surge

Gurgaon-based Bitespeed, a SaaS startup that provides chat-based commerce services to e-commerce brands, today announced it has raised $1.9 million (or Rs 14.3 crore) in a Seed funding round led by Sequoia India Surge.

First Cheque, Whiteboard Capital, and angel investors, including CRED founder Kunal Shah and Teachable founder Ankur Nagpal also participated in a Seed financing round. Prior to this round, the Gurgaon-based firm had raised $275,000 in December 2020, led by Whiteboard Capital.

Founded in June 2019 by Vinayak Aggarwal, BiteSpeed facilitates retargeting and retention of customers through WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, which have open and conversion rates that are ten times higher when compared to other online alternatives.

The startup enables e-commerce brands to sell and engage with their customers on chat/messaging apps. "This helps brands drive an estimated 10% of revenue through chat as a channel, reduce customer acquisition costs and increase lifetime value," it said.

Bitespeed says the raised funds will be used towards hiring, technology development, marketing as well as expansion in the US, Europe, and Latin America.

“The past decade of e-commerce brands were built on acquiring customers through Facebook or Google Ads and retaining them through email marketing. However, with chat apps like WhatsApp and Instagram taking center stage in recent times, our bet is that the future of commerce is conversational. At BiteSpeed, we're building the conversational commerce stack for e-commerce brands to engage and sell to their customers on chat," said Vinayak Aggarwal.

He further said the startup is now having more than 1,500 brands as customers across 50 countries. Notably, BiteSpeed 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.

It works on a freemium business model, relying on self-service product-led growth to sell to small and medium ecommerce businesses globally.

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