Montreal-based Heyday, a digital shopping assistant and live chat solution, has announced the close of a $2 million oversubscribed seed round led by Innovobot. The financing round also includes investments from Desjardins Capital and several strategic investors with deep marketing and retail expertise.
“We’re on a mission to give AI superpowers to CX teams, so they can deliver an unparalleled level of service at scale.”
-Etienne Mérineau
Founded in 2017, Heyday’s platform combines conversational AI and automation with sales and support teams. It has e-commerce and customer relationship management integrations with Shopify, Lightspeed, and Magento. Client brands include Ford, Lincoln, Decathlon, and food product company Danone. Etienne Mérineau, co-founder and CMO of Heyday told BetaKit the company was bootstrapped by its first 20 employees. The company’s headcount currently sits at 20 full-time team members, and five part-time freelancers.
Heyday said this round will help further its mission to help retailers create seamless shopping experiences across touchpoints, and bridge the divide between physical and digital stores. The company’s goal is to usher in a new era of bespoke customer shopping experiences through one on one conversations.
“We’re on a mission to give AI superpowers to CX teams so they can deliver an unparalleled level of service at scale, either via web-based chat or via leading messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Google RCS, and Apple Business Chat, to name a few,” said Mérineau.
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Part of the financing from this round will also go towards supporting and expanding the company’s engineering, research, and product teams, and to accelerate its global expansion in the United States and continental Europe.
Lead investor Innovobot is an investment and advisory services firm, that has previously invested in Ikkuma, a cloud-based wellness platform, as well as Carbicrete, a Montreal-based company commercializing a technology that enables the production of cement-free, carbon-negative concrete.
“The virtual customer assistant space is booming,” said Innovobot CEO Mario Venditti. “Heyday is strategically positioned to capture the market thanks to its experienced executive team and the breadth of their conversational AI technology.”
Image courtesy Heyday.ai