Small and medium-sized businesses, just like their larger competitors, are keen to leverage AI technology to enhance their sales processes. However, they often lack the in-house IT expertise or capital to implement enterprise-grade tools like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Darwin AI, an AI startup based in Brazil, is developing a conversational AI assistant for small and medium-sized businesses across Latin America who want to get into AI but don't have IT staff. The assistant is designed to interact with customers in a more human way and generate more revenue. If the conversation escalates negatively or becomes a sales lead, bring in a human to continue the conversation.
This is the second company for Lautaro Schiaffino and Ezequiel Sculli, who previously co-founded Sirena.app, a WhatsApp shared inbox tool for midsize businesses. They grew the company to $15 million in annual recurring revenue and presence in 25 countries, before selling it to Zenvia in 2020.
Schiaffino and Sculli will leave Zembia in 2022 and have started talking about what to do next. They wanted to help the same market and simplify complex technology for people who don't have a technical team or the time and skills to develop something themselves.
Ezequiel Sculli and Lautaro Schiaffino, co-founders of Darwin AI. (Image credit: Darwin AI)
“AI is a great opportunity, but it's difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to adopt,” Schiaffino told TechCrunch. “Business-to-business consumers in Latin America have seen an evolution of the middle market as they realize they have a lot of leads but low conversion rates. I need to talk to the customer.”
So Schiaffino and Sculli built a Darwin AI system that connects to a company's customer relationship management tools, evaluates potential sales leads, and escalates those with the highest likelihood of buying to human sales reps. We have started development. Darwin uses AI to filter prospects and customers, taking into account a company's needs. Schiaffino described it as a two-sided system that “talks” with employees and customers to capture the leads that matter most.
The conversational AI market is expected to grow by more than 20% annually through 2030 as more companies introduce automation into their processes. This has led to a number of startups looking to solve this for enterprises, most recently Rasa, Kore.ai, DXwand, and OpenDialog.
Meanwhile, the company continues to configure its AI by onboarding more users. Darwin is also close to implementing self-learning AI capabilities that will get the company up and running in days without the need for a specialized IT team.
Since its founding in 2023, Darwin has processed thousands of conversations and has customers in countries such as Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia. The company expects to surpass his 1 million conversations this year. There is also an integration with Zapier, allowing you to connect to his CRM in your region.
The company has been profitable since its inception. In fact, Shafino said the founders realized they had a hit when the user interface didn't yet exist and customers were paying, but it's unclear how much revenue Darwin is making. avoided making a statement. Darwin has a setup fee, a fixed monthly plan, and a per-conversation usage fee. Additional planning stages are coming this year.
Darwin has raised a total of $2.5 million, including pre-seed and seed rounds. Canary led his latest $2.1 million round, with participation from H20 Capital Innovation, Dalus Capital, FJ Labs, and Latitude Capital.
“The funds will be used for product development, market launch and operational teams to ensure product quality,” Schiaffino said.