Vonage acquires conversational commerce startup Jumper

Vonage today announced that it acquired Jumper.ai, a Singapore-based, AI-powered conversational commerce platform, for an undisclosed sum. Vonage says that Jumper’s team will join its product and engineering group based in Singapore as the company incorporates Jumper’s technology to complement its existing portfolio of APIs with a packaged, AI-driven offering.

“The addition of Jumper’s conversational commerce and omnichannel capabilities fits perfectly into Vonage’s strategy and is a natural extension of Vonage’s offerings. It transforms customer interactions from notifications and simple communications to conversations across the spectrum of customer engagement points,” Vonage CEO Rory Read said in a press release. “With conversational commerce capabilities, we are meeting new and existing customer needs now and are positioned to continue to meet their evolving needs well into the future, providing businesses with embedded commerce capabilities to simplify the way they serve, connect with, and sell to their own customers from anywhere, on any channel.”

Above: Jumper.ai’s conversational commerce platform.

Image Credit: Jumper.ai

Conversational commerce sits at the intersection of shopping and conversations on platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Via text, customers engage in conversations to inquire about product and pricing information while building relationships with retailers. According to Juniper Research, the total addressable market in the conversational commerce space will be worth $290 billion by 2025.

Conversational commerce

Launched in 2017 by Nyha Shree and Yash Kotak, Jumper’s chatbot technology engages customer across social media, messaging apps, and the web. With support for WhatsApp, Messenger, Apple Business Chat, Instagram, Twitter, SMS, Line, Google Ads, brand websites, and more, Jumper lets brands deploy conversational bots, assign sales associates, or opt for a mix of the two to handle customer conversations.

Jumper also provides insights about customers’ shopping behaviors, delivering notifications and product suggestions for additional selling opportunities. Customers have become increasingly open to these types of experiences during the pandemic, Vonage asserts, as retailers embrace digital transformation. According to a 2020 LivePerson survey, 85% of worldwide consumers are on board with messaging brands, and three-quarters would spend more with brands that offer messaging.

Jumper’s customers include L’Oréal, Disney, Axe, Dove, Ben & Jerry’s, Burger King, and others in food, retail, entertainment, hospitality, and travel.

“Jumper was built with a mission to help businesses respond to the increasing use of instant messaging as the most preferred mode of communication, both for connecting with family and friends and for receiving immediate, personal, and attentive experiences from brands,” Kotak said in a press release. “We are excited to be joining the Vonage team. Combining our market-leading technologies presents an opportunity to create new, amazing customer experiences, leveraging Jumper technology and the global reach of Vonage.”

For Vonage, the Jumper purchase builds on the company’s acquisition of conversational AI startup Over.ai in August 2019. Both bolster Vonage’s product suite, spanning contact center apps and communications portals that support the integration of video, voice, chat, and messaging into existing workflows and systems.

“Over 3.5 billion people use social networks on a regular basis, worldwide,” Opus Research lead analyst Dan Miller said in a statement. “Jumper anticipated the role social networks and platforms would play as platforms for advertising, promotion and, ultimately, purchases. With this technology, Vonage reinforces its platform’s ability to be agile and continuously meet the evolving needs of its customers’ customers.”