Flochat

Aug 22, 2017

Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) Mumbai-based instant messaging platform Flochat has raised an undisclosed amount of investment from iSquare Global, the venture capital arm of Apex Advisors, a company executive told VCCircle. The Flochat app allows users to seamlessly share, discover and transact experiences such as booking a cab or a movie, watching videos online, searching, or ordering food. Prateek Lal founded instant messaging app Flochat in 2015 The startup will use the fresh capital to launch its operations in Dubai and for audio and video product development, Prateek Lal, founder of the firm, said. “We are launching in Dubai by the end of this month as some of our investors are based out of there and are helping us in the market,” Lal said. The company has already partnered with companies such as Souq to come on board the platform. Flochat also raised investment from undisclosed investors a year ago. With the new round, it has secured a total of $1 million now. In India, Flochat has partnered with various firms such as food delivery service Zomato, cab booking apps Ola and Uber, deals platforms Dineout and Coupon Duniya, video-sharing platform YouTube, movie ticketing app BookMyShow, search platform Microsoft Bing, GIFs platform Tenor, rickshaw hailing app Jugnoo, and others. Lal founded Yagerbomb Media Pvt. Ltd, which runs Flochat, in 2015. He has an MBA from Welingkar Institute of Management and has previously worked in companies such as Yes Bank and DBS Bank. The Flochat platform also has an inbuilt artificial intelligence chatbot called ‘Floda’, which works as a personal assistant and helps users navigate through the app. The app supports multimedia messaging, which includes video, image, text, gifs, memes, and voice messages. It also supports audio filters, which customers can use to change the sound of audio files before sending it to their friends. “Hike is clear competition since youngsters are our target market. We don’t [consider] WhatsApp [as competition] as it is used by everyone, and the new generation who is tending towards Snapchat may not be comfortable conversing there. In India, Facebook messenger is used for day-to-day communication, it is a tertiary channel to communicate, so that again is not our competition,” Lal said. In September last year, Google had launched its messaging service called Allo, which was inbuilt with machine learning technology, courtesy of Google Assistant, the company’s virtual assistant. In June this year, instant messaging platform Hike launched its in-app payment wallet, which allows bank-to-bank money transfer via the government-backed unified payments interface platform. Like this report? Sign up for our  daily newsletter  to get our top reports.