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Wishup is a chat-based commerce app that enables customers to get everything done, including doctor booking, products delivery and household services

Wishup

Silicon Valley’s leading accelerator-cum-early-stage fund 500 Startups, along with Bangalore-based startup discovery platform TracxnLabs, has injected an undisclosed amount into Wishup, a personal assistant and chat-based commerce startup based in Delhi.

Mato Peric, former Partner and Global Managing Director at Rocket Internet Ventures, co-invested.

In addition, a host of other angels invested in the startup through TracxnSyndicate, an online platform to connect startups with potential investors.

Wishup, which has been operational on Facebook Messenger, also announced the Beta launch of its Android app. It now plans to launch the iOS version early next month and expand the technology team.

Also Read: 500 Startups puts creation of India fund on backburner

The venture was started in July 2015 by IIT Madras alumni Neelesh Rangwani and Vivek Gupta. Rangwani previously worked at Rocket Internet in Germany.

Wishup is a one-stop platform that enables customers to get everything done, including product deliveries (cakes and flowers, medicines, cigarettes), bookings (movie, cab, hotels, travel), household services (laundry, electrician, mechanic) and reservations (doctors, restaurants).

Customers can also submit their to-do lists, and Wishup will in turn take care of all their repetitive tasks such as sending gifts to their loved ones, calling electricians or booking restaurant tables and cabs at the specified times.

Its services are currently available across Delhi-NCR and Bangalore. Wishup claims to have already acquired over 10,000 customers.

Historically, users spend a lot of time in searching, filtering and choosing standardised services and products to get tasks done. Through Wishup, customers are provided with expert operators to find the best deals and services on everything they need under a single platform, the company said in a statement.

“We always felt that there was a need to aggregate all the upcoming services in the market on a single platform. During my stint in Germany, I came across a food delivery service on a simple chat. That is when this idea of aggregating services on chat clicked to me. I discussed it with Vivek and the concept of Wishup was born,” shared Rangwani.

“We started with my personal WhatsApp number and scaled up to a 1,000 requests per day within first month of operation. That’s when we validated the market potential and decided to come up with a more personalised platform on mobile phones,” he added.

Wishup also aims to make customer experience more convenient through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology for categories such as cab bookings and mobile recharges.

Said Prahadeesh Giridharan, Technology Co-founder at Wishup, “At Wishup, AI will be used at both the ends — a Wishbot which is at the customer end and an Opsbot which is at the operations end. Wishbot is autonomous chat bot that understands query intent and acts upon it for certain specific categories like phone recharge, cab bookings. Opsbot, on the other hand, engages the users on behalf of operators when they are busy. It also helps in logging requests and categorising them automatically. These features are in development stage and will be rolled out soon.”

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