Copiny (service)

The venture fund of Softline company invests $500 thousand in Copiny CRM service. Social CRM are in the increasing demand, and solution analogs in Russia are not available. Semiboldface outline

Softline Venture Partners, corporate venture fund of Softline company, announced investment of $500 thousand into Copiny, the system of communications and a customer support on the Internet and social media delivered according to the SaaS model. At the same time before Copiny it was invested by Pavel Cherkashin, the Russian angel investor specializing in development of IT projects (the volume of investments to $100 thousand). Service was created in 2010 in Bryansk by group of supporter developers, founders of service -Andrey Petrenko and Dmitry Chistov.

As specified TAdviser in Softline company, in the Russian market the Copiny service has no analogs. It works generally at the market of Russia and the CIS, Elena Alekseeva, the director of investments of Softline company noted.

According to her, customer service – the sphere which found the implementation in the Internet quite recently therefore investment into such project as Copiny, is represented to Softline perspective. "Besides, the b2b-services based on SaaS technology is a priority direction of Softline company. Having redeemed a share in Copiny, we intend to bring this service to new level, having made him the absolute market leader in the niche", – she concluded.

Social CRM Copiny so had no analogs in Russia, and now, having received 500 thousand dollars, it has every chance to occupy the most part of this niche 

At the heart of Copiny service – the special platform of community based on which the support forum will be organized gathers the knowledge base, responses and wishes of clients, corporate pages on social networks and CRM of customer company integrate. Less than for a year of a company performance more than 2000 such consumer communities were created. Service is used by such brands as Coffee House, Danone-Yunimilk, Sportmaster, Evernote and others. The cost of a subscription is 1890 rubles a month, there is also free rate with the minimum feature set.

Means of venture fund will go for opening of sales office and work with partners in Moscow, expansion of the staff of developers in Bryansk. The project team plans extensive marketing activity. Investments will allow to increase significantly rates of development of the company, to expand a set of the offered products and to propose to clients new solutions on maintenance of effective communication with their buyers or consumers, the parties hope.

Let's remind that among the last investment projects Softline Venture Partners investment of capital in such companies and services as Daripodarki, Magazinga and "the First Virtual". Usually the volume of investment into one project is from $500 thousand to $1 million. The largest investment project of fund – ActiveCloud.

Kopini and ASoft companies announced in April, 2012 joint integration. The uniform customer support center based on the Copiny system can be integrated with Asoft CRM.

2015: Copiny is going to enter the markets of the abroad

On March 30, 2015 the Copiny company announced expansion of a line of tariff plans and replenishment by its free rate focused on small and medium business. It the company tries to promote acceleration of market development of client communities in Russia and to create optimal conditions of an exit of service to foreign markets.

Screenshot of application window, 2014

"In the nearest future we plan an output of the free version of service to the American market. With respect thereto it would be wrong to limit the Russian users, without providing them access to the platform on an equal basis with English-speaking clients, - Dmitry Chistov, the founder and the CEO of Copiny noted. – However this step does not mean return to the classical Freemium model. In Russia we are still focused on cooperation with the corporate sector. The industry solutions developed by us for telecommunication, bank and the IT industries successfully are implemented and bring to clients notable results. We are sure that the entered free tariff plan for medium and small business will promote acceleration of rates of market development of Customer Community Software both in Russia, and in the CIS. In our plans to save this rate and further".

Service allows to provide answers to the same questions of 24/7 clients, lowering a flow of addresses by e-mail and in call center by 80% and 20% respectively. The saved-up knowledge base allows "close" up to 70% of addresses answers of other users. All these tools are designed to help the companies with competitive struggle for each client.

Free rate for creation of similar community on the Internet in this case – a unique opportunity without risks and additional finance costs to estimate all advantages of work with the audience.

The non-paid tariff plan offers:

• one attendant workstation,
• possibility of branding of the interface and unloading of data in Excel,
• different widgets for the website and functional units (news, polls, categories, statistics and many other things).

The free version is available from mobile devices and works is termless.