In 2017, Respond.io set out to solve a simple but growing problem: businesses could not keep pace with customers who had migrated to messaging apps. Today, with its AI-driven customer conversation management software, the company has become one of Malaysia's standout tech success stories.
Funding and Growth
Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Respond.io has raised a $62.5 million Series B round led by Camber Partners, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and existing investors. The startup last raised a $7 million Series A in 2022. According to TechCrunch, the company has grown to $35 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), a 169% year-over-year increase, while maintaining a 30% profit margin.
Origins and Leadership
Co-founder and CEO Gerardo Salandra—who previously worked at IBM and Google before joining Runtastic, a fitness tracking app sold to Adidas in 2015—founded Respond in Hong Kong in 2017 alongside CTO Hassan Ahmed and COO Iaroslav Kudritskiy. The team relocated the business to Malaysia two years later, positioning it in a rapidly growing Southeast Asian tech hub.
Platform and AI-Powered Capabilities
Respond.io helps mid- to large-sized B2C businesses drive revenue from customer conversations across multiple messaging channels, including WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Messenger, Line, Telegram, WeChat, voice calls, and web chat. The platform leverages AI agents to automatically handle high volumes of customer inquiries, qualify leads, and close sales without human intervention.
Salandra describes its core customers as “high-consideration” businesses—such as healthcare, automotive, retail, education, and travel—where customers need to speak with someone before making a purchase. “You don’t go to a website, put your credit card, and buy a car; you chat with someone, you ask a lot of questions,” he explains. The company's sweet spot is organizations with 200 to 10,000 employees.
Competitive Advantage Against AI Disruption
The rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT has raised a natural question: can they simply replace platforms like Respond.io? Salandra believes his company's strong foothold insulates it from such encroachment. Respond.io currently processes 2 billion messages per quarter, and the CEO observes that greater AI adoption correlates with faster growth for the platform. “If I just look at the numbers, every day that AI becomes more prominent, we grow faster,” he told TechCrunch. “We are not seeing what the public SaaS markets are seeing.”
Part of this resilience comes down to pricing. Unlike enterprise software competitors that charge per seat, Respond.io charges based on the volume of customer conversations, regardless of whether a human or AI handles them. “When fewer humans use your product, they make less money,” Salandra notes. “But we don’t charge like that.”
He also highlights that incumbent platforms—particularly those dominant in North America and Europe—were built around email and phone calls. “The platforms that exist bolted on messaging as a second thought. They’re very email-focused, very call-focused, but when it comes to messaging, it’s an afterthought,” he adds.
The Data Flywheel Effect
The volume of message data creates a powerful feedback loop, according to the CEO. More messages enable better AI; better AI attracts more customers; and more customers generate still more messages. “This is what we call the data flywheel,” Salandra explains. He argues that this head start matters immensely for any upstart AI company, as the compounding advantage in data and training becomes increasingly difficult to overcome.
2026 Context and Future Plans
As of early 2026, the customer conversation management space is becoming increasingly competitive, with generative AI lowering barriers to entry. However, Respond.io’s strong traction—evidenced by its 169% ARR growth, $35 million revenue run rate, and 2 billion quarterly messages—positions it to capitalize on the shift toward messaging-first customer engagement. The company plans to use the new capital to fuel product development, expand its AI agent capabilities, and pursue strategic acquisitions to strengthen its market position in Southeast Asia and beyond.
via TechCrunch AI