SleekFlow raises $7M; has 5,000 clients, Conversational AI in development

Ewan MacLeod

23 Aug 2024 — 3 min read

I'll get to the SleekFlow news in just a moment.

But first, a bit of context: One of the fantastic things about living in the Middle East is that, in many respects, you can run your life on WhatsApp.

Need to book a hair appointment? Want to check if they've got any slots available now? Just WhatsApp the team at The Man Cave. They'll generally respond within seconds during business hours.
Want a new iPhone cover or charger? WhatsApp the team at GadgetsOman and you can have the accessory in your hand 40 minutes later. (Read more)
Wondering if there's a massage slot available at the hotel? WhatsApp the concierge. Want a copy of the restaurant menu today? WhatsApp them.
Need a doctor's appointment? WhatsApp them.
Want to order a cake for a friend's Birthday? WhatsApp the team at Modern Oman Bakery and you'll be munching away in about 60 minutes.
Need your car wheels checked or replaced? WhatsApp them.
Is your kitchen gas cylinder empty? WhatsApp the guy.

It sometimes seems that the whole region runs on WhatsApp.

Living in Oman for 3 years, I really embedded myself into that world. To be fair, there wasn't much choice. WhatsApp is the default. Or, perhaps, I should rephrase that.

More accurately: Conversational interface is the default.

Anecdotally

Anecdotally, a lot of companies appeared to be using WhatsApp for Business (or WhatsApp Consumer) open on a desktop in the shop/office.

But routinely I saw other systems in use. Systems like SleekFlow.

Congratulations to the SleekFlow team who announced their $7M funding this week led by South Korean-based Atinum Investment. That brings their total amount raised to $15M.

The company specialises in offering an omnichannel social commerce platform. It's truly omnichannel:

When you want to chat about a particular issue, you can choose your favourite channel - WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, Line... or... you can just use simple 'chat'.

SleekFlow suggests that this approach can increase the chances of purchase by almost 3x. I'm not surprised. That feels very much like my own anecdotal experience. Being able to 'speak to someone' and ask a particular question can really help improve trust and credibility, especially if you're wavering over a transaction.

Here's the full set of channels and integrations currently available:

I logged into the system and took a look around - I sat and watched their intro video. They've clearly built a hugely capable set of infrastructure to power the whole range of social commerce demands. I can imagine that the SleekFlow offering would be enormously compelling for anyone from a single online shop owner to someone like L'Occitaine (SleekFlow is part of the huge luxury brand Chalhoub's accelerator in the UAE).

When it comes to AI, the SleekFlow offers 'the usual' capabilities that you might expect, for example, AI-powered suggested answers.

There's a Conversational AI feature on the way though. It's in beta form right now and I expect that the company will probably aim to offer this as an additional capability very soon. The existing corpus of data that SleekFlow already has - millions of questions and their answers - will be heavily useful there. (They're processing about 60M messages a month at the moment.)