Respond.io raises $62.5M Series B, eyes acquisitions, global push

Respond.io raised a $62.5 million Series B led by Camber Partners, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and existing investors, the company said. The Kuala Lumpur-headquartered messaging CRM now sits on $35 million in annual recurring revenue, a 169% year-over-year increase, and a 30% profit margin.

Funding and financials

The Series B follows a $7 million Series A in 2022. Respond.io says the platform processes 2 billion messages per quarter. Leadership plans to direct the new capital toward hiring, organic growth and acquisitions, with the CEO identifying two target types: bolt-on technology that fits its ecosystem, and established teams with customer bases in strategic markets such as Europe and North America. The company confirmed it is already in talks with a couple of potential acquisition targets.

Product, customers and data

Respond.io provides customer conversation management software that spans multiple messaging channels, including WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Messenger, Line, Telegram, WeChat, voice calls and web chat. The platform uses AI agents to automatically handle high volumes of customer inquiries, qualify leads and close sales without human intervention.

Co-founder and CEO Gerardo Salandra framed the startup’s core customers as "high-consideration" businesses — sectors where a purchase typically begins with a conversation rather than an immediate online checkout. He named healthcare, automotive, retail, education and travel as examples, and said Respond.io’s sweet spot is companies with 200 to 10,000 employees.

Respond.io charges based on the volume of customer conversations rather than per-seat licensing, a pricing choice Salandra says differentiates the company from enterprise incumbents that he describes as built around email and phone. He argued that message volume creates a feedback loop for model improvement: more messages yield better AI, which attracts more customers and in turn generates more messages.

Growth plan and geography

Respond.io was founded in Hong Kong in 2017 by Gerardo Salandra, Hassan Ahmed (CTO) and laroslav Kudritskiy (COO), and relocated to Malaysia two years later. The company currently generates roughly 30% of revenue from APAC, 30% from Latin America, and 20% from the Middle East and Africa, leaving North America and Western Europe at 20%. Salandra said those North American and Western European markets are now the fastest-growing and he expects them to become the company’s largest segment within two to three years.

Salandra framed the business as insulated rather than threatened by public generative AI tools, saying: "We are not seeing what the public SaaS markets are seeing." He emphasized that Respond.io’s head start on message data and its foundation in messaging-specific workflows gives it an advantage over platforms that added messaging as an afterthought.

Why it matters

Respond.io’s raise highlights investor interest in messaging-first customer service and commerce workflows that rely on conversational data rather than traditional email or phone systems. The combination of rapid ARR growth, positive margins and a data-driven AI feedback loop positions Respond.io to pursue inorganic growth in markets where messaging adoption is still accelerating.

What to watch

Watch for the company’s next moves on acquisitions, specifically any deals in Europe or North America that bring customers and teams, and for changes in regional revenue mix as those markets scale. Also track whether Respond.io’s per-conversation pricing and message-volume flywheel sustain the platform’s unit economics as AI handles a larger share of interactions.