Chpter, the AI-powered conversational commerce platform that enables businesses to sell more on social platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram, has raised $1.2 million in their Pre-Seed round to accelerate product development of its conversational commerce offering, expand its product availability across more countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and enhance its sales and marketing efforts on the back of growing demand from leading brands.
The round was led by Ken Njoroge of PANI, who is the Cofounder & Former CEO of Cellulant with participation and commitments from Plesion Capital, Techstars, Norrsken, Renew Capital, ViKtoria Ventures, and angel investors including NALA Founder and CEO Benjamin Fernandes, and Workpay Cofounders Paul Kimani and Jackson Kibigo.
“We are thrilled to pioneer the social commerce revolution, starting in Africa, as more and more consumers turn to social channels such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to communicate and purchase from the brands they love.” says Tesh Mbaabu, Co-Founder and CEO at Chpter. “Specifcally, WhatsApp’s role in business communication cannot be overstated. With more than two billion active users, it ofers an unparalleled platform for businesses to ofer support, engage in sales conversations, and maintain customer relationships.”
Launched in Kenya in 2022 by Mesongo Sibuti as CTO, Kuria Kevin as CPO, Mark Kiarie as COO and Tesh Mbaabu as CEO, Chpter provides an AI-powered conversational commerce platform that enables merchants to sell more on social platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram by automating conversations, marketing and payments all in one place.
As they were running MarketForce, the team realized there is a lot of buying and selling done over social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and soon TikTok and in Africa, e-commerce is estimated to grow to $46Bn by 2025, with over 500 million shoppers. Social commerce does a great job blending content sharing, messaging, and selling into one, helping businesses shorten the sales cycle. But most of the processes through which transactions happen—from product discovery and selection to order placements and payments—are crude and inefficient.
Businesses struggle to handle inbound requests from customers resulting in a significant percentage of sales revenue slipping through the cracks. Simply put, social networks, as they exist today, aren’t built to support end-to-end online shopping experiences, leading to e-commerce businesses losing up to 40% of their revenue to abandoned carts. Besides optimizing conversion, these businesses also struggle with order management and fulfillment, creating inconsistent customer experiences and low trust.
“A WhatsApp-led e-commerce experience makes it more inclusive and accessible to the undeserved mass market, due to its low data and digital literacy requirements as well as the over 95% usage rate in many emerging markets.” Adds Mark Kiarie, Co-Founder and COO at Chpter.
Chpter ensures businesses are capitalizing on the power of social media platforms to drive more sales by meeting customers where they already are, fostering stronger customer connections through personalized marketing, handling customer conversations across multiple platforms by unifying chats in a single dashboard.
Recently, Chpter became an approved Meta Partner to help it roll out advanced Meta features to businesses all over the world.
This includes setting up a product catalog to facilitate easy checkout and payments within Whatsapp, sending marketing campaigns on Meta platforms, and providing more cutting-edge solutions for businesses on WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram that foster growth, collaboration, personalized engagement, and automation.
Additionally, Chpter has introduced chpter.AI to enable businesses to set up a chatbot and AI sales/customer service agent to ensure no sales fall through the cracks by guaranteeing faster response to customer enquiries, leading to increased sales conversion.
“At Pani we’re always on the look out for founder teams with incredible grit- they embody the relentless passion and fight needed to build in Africa. When we fnd such founders, we walk with them & invest in them. For this reason, we’re glad to be part of the Chpter story and to support the growth of a product with the potential to transform how we buy and sell across the continent. ” Says Ken Njoroge, Managing Partner at PANI.
Chpter is already live in Kenya and South Africa and is planning to launch in at least 5 more markets including Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and Morocco to power hundreds of businesses across ecommerce and retail, financial services, education, media and entertainment, travel and hospitality, health and wellness.
Some customers include Britam, Decathlon, Dovey Pharma, Kicks Kenya, TSHEPO, Galxboy SA, Phoneplace Kenya, Flexpay, Standup Collective, IKOJN, City Walk, Artft, Vision Plus and Victoria Homestore, to mention a few.
“We invested in Chpter because of their highly innovative technology and best-in-class leadership team. Their digital solutions solve complex problems specifc to African commerce, highlighting their potential for pan-African success, and their leadership team has the capability and experience to capitalize on this massive opportunity.” Added Ben Finlay, General Partner at Plesion Capital.