AI-focused customer communications app Yobi raises $2.37m seed funding to accelerate growth

AI-focused customer communications app Yobi raises $2.37m seed funding to accelerate growth

Published: 03-02-2023 10:29:00 | By: Pie Kamau | hits: 3638 | Tags:

Yobi, the AI-focused customer communications app catering specifically to the small business community, announced it has raised a total of $2.37 million as part of its oversubscribed seed round.

Investment firms include HRC2139 Investments LLC and IRA Capital, along with angel investors Charles Annenberg Weingarten, VP and Director of the Annenberg Foundation and Founder of Explore.org, Keith Donald, Co-founder of SpringSource, Jason Young, Partner at Totally Human, and other angel investors. The funds will support company operations, team expansion and product innovation. The capital will go toward several endeavors to enhance the app to remain ahead of customers’ needs, with a focus on incorporating generative artificial intelligence to augment the businesses of Yobi's customers.

Yobi will also use the funds to expand its team to include more AI engineers and MLOps, invest in new technologies that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the company’s operations and launch innovative new features. The company plans to tap into the power of generative AI to provide businesses with customized solutions that help them automate their processes, improve customer experience and drive revenue growth. Yobi is fortunate to have Dr. Edward Zuckerberg – the father of Facebook founder and its parent company Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, a dentist who serves as a strategic advisor to oral healthcare startups, speaking to his colleagues on optimal business practices (including social media), technology integration and the oral-systemic connection.

Edward J. Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder, Cupertino Dental Group: "One of the complaints I've heard from people I've lectured is, 'we don't have time to manage how we reach people from multiple channels and meet their needs.' It's time-consuming for dentists who run their practices. When I met Ahmed Reza, who became CEO of Yobi, I realized he had an idea to make lives easier for those in my industry managing their practices. Dentists have their hands full and are inundated with requests through Facebook/Meta and other online or social media channels. Yobi is a potent tool that solves this major challenge by connecting multiple communications in one app. To be super successful with anything, you must develop a concept that disrupts the whole industry. That's what Ahmed has done with Yobi, and it's part of why I have immense admiration and respect for him and great appreciation for what he created.”

Yobi’s customers will benefit significantly, and in multiple ways, from this newest round of funding and how it complements the initial investment. Customers will experience better activation and onboarding flows, increased brand loyalty and revenue, reduced marketing and advertising costs and a consistent customer experience throughout every stage of their journey. In addition, small businesses can use Yobi’s powerful AI technology that supports translation and provides a business assistant, call/messaging capabilities, analytics and reporting.

Ahmed Reza, Co-founder and CEO, Yobi: ''We are incredibly grateful to our investors who made this round a speedy and successful one, to the angel investors responsible for our initial funding round and to Dr. Zuckerberg and other advisors for their strategic counsel. The vision of Yobi is of an AI-augmented business app that utilizes advanced technology to replicate and supplement human intelligence and decision-making abilities, helping to improve sales, customer service and revenue for businesses. We developed Yobi to automate communications and create personalized customer experiences at scale. The funds we’ve just received will go toward hiring the brightest minds and employing the best technologies to develop brand-new features. We don’t only want to meet our customers’ needs; we want to get ahead of them and help customers grow their businesses with the power of generative AI!''

Reza emphasized that Yobi’s core focus remains on building the best product that the company can and on unlocking AI's power for the organization’s customers. Yobi's all-in-one app includes text, call, customer relationship management (CRM) and team collaboration. The company's AI-powered Yobi Translator and Call Sentiment Analysis are the latest capabilities added to elevate the app's CRM experience. This makes Yobi even more essential for businesses looking to succeed. And it offers a broader range of tools to help them communicate effectively without a language barrier, gaining insights into customers' feelings regarding their product or service.

Marek Laskowski, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Nevada Tour Company: ''Yobi is a godsend to our startup. We needed a robust communications tool to connect with our customers that unified our phone, text and social media channels into one convenient spot. It had to be powerful yet simple enough for our whole team to use – without any hassles. Yobi fit the bill perfectly. They gave us more of what we needed than the big guys offered, and they eliminated the unnecessary complexities of their offerings.''

www.yobi.app