SleekFlow secures $7 million in funding

The money will be used to continue developing its AI, as well as dive deeper into Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and make inroads into Europe

SleekFlow, a Singapore- and Hong Kong-headquartered social commerce platform that has built a conversational artificial intelligence suite for customer engagement targeted to Asian markets, said Wednesday it had secured a further $7 million in funding. The money will be used to continue developing its AI, as well as dive deeper into Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and make inroads into Europe.

The startup’s fundraise and plans for growth underscore the rapid growth of social commerce – where sellers leverage platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok and YouTube to market their goods and find new customers, and consumers use the same social media platforms to discover and buy things.

Social commerce is currently growing faster than conventional e-commerce. The estimated market value of social commerce in the Asia Pacific region alone is expected to surpass $894 million by 2028, representing a 10.6% growth from 2022.

Within that, conversational AI is a big part of how social commerce has developed. Using AI-based chat functionality means sellers can scale their customer service to work with masses of users while still keeping their own operations lean. It also adds a programmatic layer to the process, with analytics giving them more insight into what works, and what does not, and when and to whom, and to automate different kinds of responses to different audiences accordingly.

The conversational AI industry is projected to touch $49.9 billion by 2030, up 24.9% from $13.2 billion in 2024.

Henson Tsai, the founder and CEO of SleekFlow, says that the startup sets itself apart from its rivals by way of more streamlined features. Those features include omnichannel capabilities (that is, marketing to more than one platform and interface from a single dashboard), marketing automation, and a user-friendly flow builder that enables flexibility in creating unique chat experiences for each customer. Instant checkout capabilities include in-chat payment links, collaborative team features, built-in CRM platform integrations with HubSpot, SalesForce, and e-commerce functionality.