According to the CMX Community Industry Report 2021, 86% companies stated the importance of community to its mission and 69% companies shared its plans to invest in community building.
This was along the same time when the pandemic disrupted the traditional ways of connecting brands with its communities. A lot of brands today have a very strong online presence aiming to build its own community on social media platforms.
The problem lies when data and information is being extracted from these communities; the only information that is extracted from these platforms are long lists of names and bios which does not indicate anything clearly.
This poses a hindrance to the community building process of the brand. The tools currently present in social media are not adequate to run a serious business where the object is to build a community, run marketing campaigns, build a strong customer support etc.
Saad Jamal, Wasil, Shubham Raj, and Amit Dubey together built Serri in 2021. It is a community building platform that uses AI chatbots to engage, build, and monetize on communities present over multiple platforms.
Jamal, co-founder and CEO told Entrackr, “We offer a mobile app which integrates all these community platforms across Discord, WhatsApp, etc. and one can engage and manage all of these platforms.”
Most users would not prefer to move on to a completely different app. Solving the problem of hesitancy to switch platforms, the chatbot is deployed into already existing sites that are being currently used to build these communities by providing user specific answers and personal recommendations.
As privacy of data continues to remain a challenge especially in the marketing tech and community tech sectors, the chatbot requires only a few initial details to understand the interested target sectors and the kind of connection recommendations needed.
Where other similar products provide just growth and engagement data, Serri gives companies deep and relevant insights into the target community members’ changing interests and demographics, said Jamal. These insights help the company in decision-making, assisting in market growth, and propel partnerships and collaborations between companies.
Now it is of utmost importance that the information that is churned out by the chatbot is accurate. AI chatbots are usually built by feeding information and data through interactions and conversations that happen on the internet. Although this could help it in giving apt responses it is also highly prone to giving out incorrect data. For an app like Serri accuracy is of utmost importance.
This is when a community manager is placed to intervene with the process. The information and recommendations are run through the intermediary community managers. These community managers lead Serrch.
Serrch is one of the platform’s key products and it works in sync with Serri. It is used to engage customers on a one-on-one basis. This blend of AI and human workforce is done to make sure the information passed on is precise and relevant.
The company runs on a subscription model that differs in pricing and campaign fees charged based on the number of messages sent. Currently running its alpha testing, it is focusing on 2-3 communities with over 600 users.
The currently bootstrapped company is in the process of raising its first round. With a stronghold in the US and UK markets as compared to the Indian market due to wider market acceptance rates, it plans on expanding its services to most English-speaking countries in the future.
Its local competitors are Gurugram-based Threado and Bengaluru-based Lens DAO. Internationally the company is up against Singapore-based Nas.io and US-based Blaze AI.
Along with building a strong B2B SaaS sales team, Serri plans on onboarding over 1000 communities by the end of this fiscal year. It further plans on building partnerships in the US, Europe, and South-East Asia regions to expand its presence.
The global enterprise social networks and online communities’ market was estimated to be valued at $5,539 million in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.5% over the period of 2021-28.
