With the new funding, we will double down on product innovation, growth: Hiver’s Niraj Ranjan Rout

New Delhi: Early in March SaaS startup Hiver raised $22 million in Sequence B spherical led by K1 Capital with participation from its present buyers – Kalaari Capital, Kae Capital, and AngelList. Hiver, a customer support answer that works inside Gmail will use the recent capital to speed up its advertising and gross sales effort. In an e-mail interview Niraj Ranjan Rout, CEO and co-founder, Hiver discusses the recent capital infusion, product providing, improvements, managing spam and extra. Edited excerpts:

You simply raised $22 million. What are you planning to make use of this capital for?


We lately raised a spherical of Sequence B funding – $22 million, led by K1 Capital, with participation from our present buyers – Kalaari Capital, Kae Capital, and AngelList.

This spherical of funding offers us all of the ammunition we have to additional construct the customer support answer for companies. We’re seeking to double down on our product and development.

E-mails have an enormous downside of spam. How can this be managed? Does Hiver have options for this?


Let’s not overlook that e-mail continues to be very sturdy as a channel that companies use to speak with prospects and companions. E-mail’s asynchronous nature, ubiquity, and construction makes it nice for enterprise communication.

Hiver is a customer support answer that works inside Gmail, and one in all its benefits is that it helps assist groups streamline and manage their inbox. With options reminiscent of question delegation and workload administration, brokers have readability on what they’re engaged on. Hiver additionally helps groups collaborate whereas overcoming the issue of inbox litter that comes with CCs and forwards.

Moreover, Hiver lets assist groups arrange personalized automations. So, let’s say, you’re getting a variety of spammy newsletters into your assist group inbox, you possibly can create an automation that ensures these emails are filed away – making certain a spam-free inbox.

What has buyer adoption been like? What number of prospects do you may have?


At current, we cater to over 1,500 firms throughout 30 international locations (US, UK, Australia and Germany amongst others). A few of our prospects embody Harvard College, Canva, UpWork, Vacasa, Flexport, and Gong.

What new improvements do you propose to introduce this 12 months, if any?


We all know that whereas e-mail continues to be an important customer support channel for many companies, a variety of organizations now more and more use chat and social media to speak to their prospects.

We’re now engaged on enabling communication by means of these channels, proper from inside Gmail. These capabilities will probably be added to Hiver in 2022.

You might be aiming at $100 million income within the subsequent 4-5 years. This will probably be from natural development of your present providing?


Sure. We’re going to go 10x on the product. We need to do that by together with extra buyer communication channels and including extra highly effective functionalities. We additionally need to create an even bigger buzz round Hiver as a model, by doing extra progressive campaigns.

What was the influence of the pandemic on your small business? How do you see development now with companies opening up?


Indisputably, the pandemic impacted our enterprise and likewise the way in which we work. Considered one of Hiver’s core choices is enabling group collaboration. That meant a variety of our prospects – who needed to go distant as a result of pandemic – have been in a position to overcome the collaboration challenges, handle workload effectively, and maintain monitor of what’s occurring throughout their groups. With companies now opening up, there are absolutely extra alternatives.

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