Malaysia’s AI agent-powered messaging app Respond.io raises $62.5M, eyes acquisitions

https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/respond-team-comp-2.webp?resize=1200,800

In 2017, Respond.io set out to solve a simple problem: businesses couldn’t keep up with customers who had moved to messaging apps. Today Respond, with its customer conversation management software, has become one of the tech success stories of Malaysia.

The startup, headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, has raised a $62.5 million Series B round led by Camber Partners, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and existing investors. It last raised a $7 million Series A in 2022. The company has grown to $35 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), growing 169% year-over-year, at a 30% profit margin, it tells TechCrunch.

Co-founder and CEO Gerardo Salandra, who worked at IBM and Google before joining Runtastic, a fitness tracking app that was sold to Adidas in 2015, founded Respond in Hong Kong in 2017 alongside Hassan Ahmed (CTO) and laroslav Kudritskiy (COO). The team relocated the business to Malaysia two years...

Copyright of this story solely belongs to techcrunch.com. To see the full text click HERE

Read more

https://www.itvoice.in/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IIT-Ropar.png

IIT Ropar’s ANNAM.AI, Syngenta and Google Launch ‘HACK CORE  2026’, a National AI Hackathon to Build AI-Enabled Solutions for Farmers and the Agri Ecosystem across India

ANNAM.AI, India’s first Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture, hosted at IIT Ropar under the Ministry of Education, Government of India has launched HACK CORE 2026, a National AI hackathon in collaboration with Syngenta and Google, inviting innovators to develop AI-driven solutions for crop health,