Customers today engage with a brand through multiple channels – online, offline, call centres, and more. Measuring customer experience on a real-time basis across all these touch points and solving any pain points therefore is imperative for any company to ensure that its customers do not shift to a rival brand. And Chennai-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Cloudcherry is helping companies do this with its cloud-based, analytics-based customer experience management platform.
The startup’s solution seems to have won the confidence of clients, with Cloudcherry notching up around 20 US-based small and medium enterprises (SMB) as its clients. This month it got Middle East-based retail chain Alyasra Fashion on board. In India, it has recently tied up with Adidas and baby products etailer BabyOye, even as it tries to expand operations in the South East Asia market.
“Cloudcherry is basically a real-time way to measure customer engagement at all touch points, a real-time way for getting alerts if some problem occurs, and a real-time way to analyse the data and have actionable data in front of all the stakeholders,” says Vinod Muthukrishnan, CEO, Cloudcherry.
How it works
Cloudcherry provides an end-to-end solution that helps brands improve customer engagement by mapping the customer journey across multiple touch points, collecting omni-channel responses, measuring ‘net promoter score’ and discovering actionable customer insights. It offers real-time customer sentiment tracking and its product is delivered as software as a service (SaaS).
A brand can deploy the product across multiple channels such as tablets in stores, smartphones, email, SMS, QR codes, IVRS and websites to capture experiential data. This data then flows into a centralised dashboard with insights and analytics.
Brands get access to round-the-clock real-time data, metrics and analytics about their customers via a ‘click-configure-deploy’ platform. In a few clicks, businesses can check what people are appreciating in a store, what has helped push up sales, and more.
Funding
Founded in 2013, Cloudcherry Analytics Pvt Ltd, which runs customer experience management platform Cloudcherry, was bootstrapped till May 2015. It closed its first round of external funding of $1 million led by IDG Ventures, and supported by Chennai Angels Network and Bangalore-based IT firm Capillary Technologies India Pvt Ltd in July last year. The company has also been chosen for Aditya Birla Group’s 20-day Bizlabs incubation programme. Cloudcherry recently graduated from Microsoft Ventures Accelerator batch, and is now part of Microsoft’s ISV partner programme.
The startup is looking to raise $5 million (around Rs 33 crore) in Series A funding round by end of February. It has already received a commitment from existing investor IDG Ventures to participate in the round. There may be two more VC investors, Muthukrishnan told VCCircle. “We are almost there and are working on term sheets. In a fortnight’s time, we’ll be able to close the funding round and get the money,” he adds.
Customers
The startup focuses on large enterprises in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, and the small and medium business segment in the US.
Currently, the startup has 77 enterprise customers. Across APAC, Cloudcherry has a joint go-to-market pact with Capillary Technologies, and expects to close new deals in the retail space soon. Most of these deals will be with companies in the Middle East, mainly in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
“We expect to move towards countries in the east, such as Singapore and Malaysia, in the coming months,” says Muthukrishnan.
In India, its client list includes Titan, Fastrack, HDFC Bank, Puma, Caratlane.com, Eureka Forbes and Qatar Airways, among others.
Partnerships and expansion plans
Cloudcherry also has a joint go-to-market deal with Microsoft in India. Under the co-selling partnership, Cloudcherry offers its products to Microsoft customers.
“In India and APAC, sales are via three channels – direct sales (through our team), partnership with Capillary, and in tandem with Microsoft,” he adds.
For the US market, Cloudcherry has tied up with Freshdesk, and is also in talks to partner with Microsoft there. The company plans to be on CRM player Salesforce’s App Exchange platform in the coming months.
“Our strategy is to partner with companies that are excellent in their respective fields and complement customer experience management.”
Cloudcherry currently employs 30 people but plans to expand the team as it ramps up its US business. “The US-focused team operates from Bangalore. Our digital marketing and insights sales team is going to grow significantly. The other team that will grow is the client success team. We are looking at doubling our team by 2016 end,” says Muthukrishnan.
Competition
Cloudcherry’s rivals include companies that offer customer feedback metrics to brands. Some of the customer feedback startups include Coraza Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs an online customer feedback platform under Akosha.com; Voyce, which got recently acquired by cloud telephony company Exotel; and Fungru.
“We don’t see anyone in India offering end-to-end customer engagement metrics (CEM) platform at the moment, but it’s just a matter of time,” says Muthukrishnan.
Management consulting firms such as Ma Foi Analytics and Mu Sigma also offer big data analysis and consequent customer engagement strategies.
The cloud-based firm expects to have 5,000 SMB customers from the US on its platform and 200 large enterprise customers in India and APAC region combined by 2018. “The last quarter has been phenomenal for us. We expect to have around $15 million annual recurring revenue in three years,” says Muthukrishnan.
Cloudcherry claims its revenue in December 2015 doubled that of the previous month, with its revenue in December 2015 six times that of April 2015.
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