Helpchat agrees to acquire hyperlocal discovery platform, Niffler to improve chat based personal assistant’s capabilities

Helpchat, a chat-based personal assistant app that helps you get more things done, has agreed to acquire Mumbai-based start-up Niffler for an undisclosed amount.

Be it anything, from recharging your phone to tech support, from travel booking to holiday guidance, from ordering food to shopping assistance to finding deals & coupons, from finding gifts to suggesting the best electronic item, from doing a web check-in to getting your laundry done, Helpchat claims to get it done.

Niffler was incepted as a discovery platform for users to access deals and discounts from local brick and mortar stores and recently introduced chat-based interactions between consumers and local businesses.

This makes Niffler a perfect DNA match for Helpchat and the acquisition a step further in the consolidation of Helpchat’s dominant position in the chat-based personal assistant eco-system in India.

Both Niffler and Helpchat share the common vision of facilitating the everyday life and tasks of consumers with the right information over the highly convenient and quick medium of chat.  Acquisition will also enable Helpchat to launch its services in Pune and Mumbai faster as Niffler already has a presence in these key markets. Post the acquisition, the entire team at Niffler will join Helpchat.

Ankur Singla, CEO and Founder, Helpchat said, “We are geared for aggressive pan-India growth in the coming few months. The acquisition of Niffler is one of the first major steps in this direction. Niffler team has expertise on community-driven experiences and retailer supported commerce.  They share our vision of enabling consumers to get more done through chat-based personal assistance. Acquisition will also help Helpchat accelerate the growth of its personal assistant engine across the areas of offline commerce and local deals based on user’s intent.”

Niffler co-founder Edul Patel,said, “In Helpchat we found the perfect partners to further our mission of plugging the information gap that exists in India. We share Helpchat’s vision of assisting consumers in getting more done by doing less, using its chat-based personal assistant app. We look forward to combining our brand synergies and expertise with theirs and setting new benchmarks in the way consumer-get their daily task done in India.”

Co-founded by Edul Patel, Prince Arora and Viraj Shah, Niffler was launched in July 2014 with the objective of providing a location based contextual offers and deals discovery platform for the Indian consumers. It had raised funding worth $1 million in March 2015 from SAIF partners.