Netcore acquires Chiratae, Endiya backed no-code startup Hansel.io

SaaS-based marketing automation technology company Netcore Solutions on Tuesday said it has acquired Hansel Software-owned real-time, no-code, product experience platform Hansel.io, in a cash and stock deal.

Netcore declined a request for comment on the deal value.

Hansel Software’s 15 employees will join Netcore’s workforce of over 630, the latter's group CEO Kalpit Jain told TechCircle, adding that Hansel’s leadership team will continue to lead the business and product stack integration.

“We are taking over the complete Hansel.io business undertaking stack along with the assets, including product IP, customer contracts and employees, with settlement and cash exit to all Hansel investors,” Jain said.

The deal is the Mumbai based company’s third acquisition in recent months -- it acquired conversational artificial intelligence-powered (AI) chatbot engine Quinto.ai in April 2019, and AI-first omnichannel personalization and recommendation engine Boxx.ai in November 2019.

Bengaluru- and Menlo Park-based Hansel.io is backed by a clutch of marquee venture capital firms, including Chiratae Ventures, Vertex Ventures and Endiya Partners. The company has raised a total of $5.4 million in funding.

The buy, a statement said, will help Netcore accelerate its journey to build customer experience and engagement cloud capabilities, as well as expand use cases across user onboarding and activation, feature adoption, retention and experimentation for mobile app companies.

Hansel.io was founded in 2014 by former Flipkart product and technology professionals Varun Ramamurthy and Parminder Singh. The startup’s services are used by product managers and growth marketers to place contextual nudges and walkthroughs at appropriate times for the client-end user, to boost user activation, conversions, feature adoption and engagement on app and web.

“With our expertise in the mobile app development space, and Netcore’s expertise and reach in the industry built over decades will surely help our young team navigate the still nascent no-code movement better. The combined offering can now be used to manage the end-to-end experience of your users, within and outside the product,” Singh said.

Hansel also operates a suite of low-code offerings, including feature management and A/B (also known as split testing) experimentation for mobile apps. Its clients, spread across sectors in India and Southeast Asia, include Paytm, redBus, MPL and Tokopedia.

“As nearly 90% of mobile internet usage is within apps and over 1,00,000 new apps (are) released every month, it is essential for product and growth marketers to focus on continuous enhancement of their in-app user experience,” Jain said.

Founded in 1997 by Rajesh Jain, Netcore helps B2C brands create digital experiences with a range of products that aid with acquisition, engagement and retention of users, using an AI/ML powered marketing automation and customer engagement platform.

Currently, the company services over 70% of B2C unicorns in India and Southeast Asia, including Flipkart, Swiggy, Lenskart, MakeMyTrip, Dream11, Unacademy, OYO, Ola, Nykaa, Traveloka, Tokopedia, GoJek and Bukalapak.

Its clientele also includes over 3,000 enterprises, such as Thomas Cook, Go Air, Cleartrip, HDFC, Kotak, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI, Reliance Group, Vodafone, PizzaHut Malaysia, Malindo Airlines, Philippine Airlines, Standard Chartered and Gulf News.

The company claims to deliver over 10 billion emails, more than 10 billion SMSes and web/app notifications, and handle over 100 billion events a month. It has offices across eight countries in North America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East and Africa regions.

Mumbai-based investment banking firm Equirus Digital is the financial advisor to Netcore.