Smooch, a Messaging App for Businesses, Raises $7.6 Million

Smooch, the maker of a business messaging app, has raised $7.6 million in venture capital, according to reports on Monday. The Montreal-based company, which also has offices in San Francisco, plans to use the money to expand its unified messaging platform.

“Smooch will use this financing round to expand its support for consumer messaging channels and business software vendors, and to continue to build its team,” according to a statement.

In June, the company added a feature to its website-based chat program that allows conversations to be moved atomically to other chat apps, like Facebook Messenger, Line, WeChat and Twilio.

“The conversation is maintained wherever you move,” Hamnett Hill, Smooch’s co-founder and CEO told the Wall Street Journal.

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The product also allows for integrations with business apps like FrontApp, Slack and Zendesk as well as wth chat bots.

The investment round round was led by Montreal-based Real Ventures and iNovia Capital. Boston-based TA Associates and some of Smooch’s co-founders also participated.

The company says that it plans to hire more than 20 new employees in San Francisco and Montreal.

“Smooch is the first messaging company to offer B2Cs a fast, cost effective infrastructure to offer and scale messaging,” said Chris Arsenault, Managing Partner at iNovia Capital. “This emerging market presents a huge opportunity to make an impact on how consumers interact with their favorite brands.”

Smooch was originally founded as part of Radialpoint, a Montreal-based tech support company; it was spun-out in November 2015. In January, Radialpoint was acquired by AppDirect, a San Fransisco-based cloud service marketplace.