Helpchat has become the latest player to enter the ever expanding market for local services apps. Helpchat is a chat-based personal assistant app that helps people get more things done, claims the company.
Helpchat is the re-branded version of 2010-launched Akosha, which was mainly a complaints redressal platform. Over time and experience, New-Delhi based Akosha found that what consumers need mostly is assistance and response to queries, and that complaints made up a small share of customer concerns. This gave rise to Helpchat which seeks to do just that.
It acts as a personal assistant to the user, by taking on itself the process of identifying user requirements, providing options for the same and even picking out the most suitable option, followed by placing the order.
Helpchat currently has a team of 350 chat experts to respond to customer queries and it plans to expand to over 1,000 chat experts over time. However, what it is focusing on is“doing the tech right”, says Ankur Singla, co founder and CEO, Helpchat. About a quarter of the 30,000 requests it handles on a daily basis is managed automatically by a chatbot, claims Ankur. “We have worked very hard on getting the tech in place,” he said.
In this light, Ankur notes that Bengaluru would be the right place for Helpchat to build a strong team for tech. The company has a technology and product office in the city.
“Bengaluru will give us the right kind of talent to build the tech base,” he said.
Helpchat has associated with over 100 SMB (small and medium businesses) partners in Bengaluru in and around Koramangala, Indiranagar, and Whitefield. It has about 30 enterprise clients across the Helpchat app and its other brand Onedirect, which is a B2B platform in the CEM (customer experience management) space.