Channel Talk, an All-in-One AI Business Messenger, Achieves $27 M in ARR

Channel Talk(채널톡), Channel Corporation’s(채널코퍼레이션) all-in-one AI business messenger, reported annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $27 million (KRW 3.6 billion) last year. ARR is an indicator that shows the revenue generated each year from customers under contract, and is a key benchmark for predicting the status and growth of SaaS companies that offer annual contracts or subscriptions.

Channel Talk’s strong performance five years after launch has been driven by a combination of aggressive business expansion and stabilisation of existing services, including high customer satisfaction and retention rates, an increasing number of enterprise customers using AI telephony products, and global business growth.

Channel Talk’s customer growth rate over the past year has been around 40%, driven by high customer satisfaction with its convenience services. In addition, Channel Talk is not only consistently retaining its existing customers, with a 95% retention rate for its paid channels and a doubling of its subscription rate, but is also rapidly increasing its subscription conversion rate.

In addition, Channel Talk’s AI internet phone ‘Meet’, launched last year, has been increasingly adopted by businesses in B2B sectors such as hospitals, legal and education, where telephone consultations are essential, with features such as identifying consultation history by linking customer information and transcribing consultation calls using AI speech recognition technology, and has attracted additional customers such as Bullsone, Pindirect and REEBONZ.

Channel Corporation’s international performance has also been a key growth driver. Since launching in Japan in 2018, 25% of the company’s revenue has been generated there, with 15,000 businesses using Channel Talk locally. The company’s global footprint is growing, with major Japanese fashion brands such as BAYCREWS and BEAMS among its customers.

This year, Channel Corporation is launching new AI features to improve the efficiency of consultations. Various functions of Channel Talk will be enhanced with AI, such as summarising and tagging consultation content, recommending answers based on consultation content, and automatically answering questions through chatbots. In addition, through collaboration with business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, Channel Corporation plans to integrate AI into products used by contact centres to improve the overall efficiency of consultations, making it an essential AI solution for CS operations.

Cheuk Kim, Chief Managing Director of Atinum Investment, which led the investment in Channel Corporation, said, “For B2B SasS leader Channel Corporation to reach over $22.5 million (KRW 3 billion) in ARR is a significant milestone for the domestic SasS industry,” adding, “This is the highest growth level by global standards and a testament to Channel Talk’s superior product and technology capabilities.”

Siwon Choi, CEO of Channel Corporation, said, “Through continuous product improvement, we have become a product used by both SMB and enterprise customers in Korea and Japan. This year, we will significantly reduce CS resources with our powerful AI technology and accelerate our entry into the global market by entering the US, the home of SaaS”.

Meanwhile, Channel Talk is an all-in-one business solution that provides chat support, CRM marketing, team messenger, AI telephony and more. It is used by more than 150,000 businesses in 22 countries around the world and has grown rapidly since its launch in 2018, averaging 2x year-on-year growth.