Hipmob, provides mobile CRM as a service. If you’re an app developer or a business that has mobile app customers, you would use Hipmob to communicate with your users around sales (deals and offers) and customer support. Hipmob was founded by Ayo & Femi Omojola who had built mobile products for about 5 years before starting Hipmob; to solve a need they faced.TechMoran caught up with Ayo Omojola and here is what he told us;
What does Hipmob do?
We provide a mobile SDK/Plugin that you put inside your app, and an admin interface you use to communicate with users of that app. You can send them deals, offers, push notifications, and they can query you for help, or search your knowledge base for answers.
What inspired you to launch an IM like offline service and CRM tools for mobile?
We were developing a mobile gaming platform at the time (Flypad) which saw incredibly fast growth. The product was in beta though, with lots of technical challenges to be hammered out and we found ourselves responding to tons of emails and chats from our website. We figured there had to be a better way, and looked around – no one had built one. So we did it ourselves.
Who is your target group? Why mobile?
> If you have a mobile app and you care about your customers, use us. Mobile is what we know best, and it’s the future of the web (mobile devices will outstrip PCs sometime this year).
How do you make work your cut?
We invoice on a combination of seats (number of team members you have using hipmob) and reach (number of customers you communicate with in a given month.
Any clients you are powering already?
SmartThings, DoctorOnDemand, and several others. You can see some in our gallery.
Any local competition in Africa?
Don’t think so.
How unique are you from the competition if present?
We integrate seamlessly into popular business tools such as salesforce, Zendesk and others. Full list here – our implementations are always getting better.
What challenges have you faced? How did you solve them?
Every challenge in the book. Book’s not finished yet 🙂
Any plans to expand out of your country?
We already have customers on pretty much every continent. That being said, we have no plans to open overseas offices just yet.
Have you received any funding yet?
We were in the Winter 2012 batch of YCombinator. Not disclosing funding 🙂
How is the startup environment where you are based?
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Being based in Palo Alto – we’re surrounded by startups. It’s a really strong community. Young founders should question their assumptions. All of them.
Most likely solving another mobile problem.
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