US and India-based Eichiba Labs Inc, a software as a service (SaaS) startup that seeks to create a Slack or WhatsApp-like experience around emails, has raised its first round of institutional funding.
Anweshan Guha Roy, co-founder and CEO, told VCCircle that the startup has raised $1.35 million (around Rs 10 crore) from cross-border venture firm Sirius One Capital.
The startup, founded last year, will use the capital to hire core members of the engineering and marketing teams with an aim to expand in the US, European Union and the UK, he said.
Prior to this funding, the startup had raised angel investment from Sanjay Somasundaram in stealth mode in January last year.
Eichiba aims to convert a traditional email inbox into a customer communication platform. The platform is designed for enterprise users across customer-focused teams primarily targeted at sales, account management, pre-sales, strategic alliances and implementation teams.
Roy noted that email is still and will be the most reliable communication channel for enterprises with their customers. However, email still remains a tool for one-to-one communication because of which customer-focused teams have to rely on multiple silo tools to collaborate with internal team members to support any customer requests throughout the customer communication lifecycle.
"This leads to information silos and massive loss of information that falls through the cracks during context switching. And we want to change that with Eichiba," added Roy, a Leeds University graduate.
This is not Roy's first stint at entrepreneurship. He had previously cofounded RadioLocus which was in the analytics space.
Eichiba later added cofounder Kumar Ujjwal, a University of North Alabama graduate. Ujjwal, who is chief product officer, was earlier the first product hire at restaurant software company Punchh that was acquired by Par for $500 million this year.
Eichiba’s product acts as a software layer on top of Gmail and Outlook. The firm plans to integrate other key customer communication channels such as WhatsApp, Slack, and Drift in the platform along with native integration with platforms such as Salesforce, Hubspot and Smartsheet.
Eichiba currently has a waitlist of customers from over 50 enterprises, said Roy.
Sirius One Capital was floated by angel investor Guruswamy Ramasubramanian. According to the company's website, Sirius One Capital's Rs 100 crore alternative investment fund is registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to invest in tech startups.
