Jivo, Live Site (formerly JivoSite)

History

2023: TAdviser interview with CEO Oleg Gumerov

Chat boats become an integral part of the process of supporting customers small and medium-sized businesses., Denis Afanasyev director of the B2B products division (Salute SberDevices chatbot developer SaluteBot), and, Oleg Gumerov CEO of Jivo (chat platform developer for operators), answered questions TAdviser and told how chatbots automate customer service in text channels and help in business development. Read more here. [1]

2021

Sber completed the acquisition of the Jivo platform

On August 13, 2021, Sberbank announced the completion of the transaction for the purchase of the Jivo communication platform (Live Site LLC) - the bank received 100% of the company. The founders of the platform will continue to work in the company: Timur Valishev - in the role of general director, Nikolai Ivannikov - technical director.

Jivo for August 2021 has already entered the Sberbank ecosystem: entrepreneurs have received a service for communication with their audience, in which additional channels and functions regularly appear. In early August 2021, the Jivo widget appeared on the developers.sber.ru website (SmartMarket platform) - developers will be able to write there and get operator advice. The plans include even deeper integration into Sberbank products and the further development of the Jivo service itself.

In June 2021, Jivo announced the launch of integration with the Instagram app through the official Messenger API. A partnership with SendPulse, the WhatsApp Business API provider, is expected in the near future. In mid-August 2021, Jivo will launch the video calling function.

I would like to thank the Jivo team for quickly solving all the issues that arise during the integration. Thanks to the mutual understanding reached in just a few months, Jivo has organically integrated into our ecosystem and is already creating great value for thousands of Sberbank corporate clients. The Jivo communication platform is popular not only in Russia, but also abroad. I think that the merger of our efforts, technologies and capabilities will provide the service with even larger prospects and, of course, will open the horizons for various companies in the Sberbank ecosystem, "said Lev Khasis, First Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Sberbank.

{{quote 'We are pleased with the opportunities that the Sberbank ecosystem gives us. We can both strengthen integration into Sberbank products and continue to develop our service in Russia and the world. During our collaboration, we have already launched integration with the SmartMarket platform - and according to the plan, several more important and useful updates for the business. I am sure that together you can achieve more success than autonomously, - said Timur Valishev, Founder, CEO of Jivo. }}

According to the statistical service BuiltWith (2021), Jivo occupies more than 50% of the market in Russia and is in third place in popularity in the world: Jivo is installed on more than 270 thousand sites.

Sber bought Jivo

On June 7, 2021, it became known about the sale of Live Site LLC to Sberbank at a price that the companies did not disclose. As Kommersant writes with reference to an interlocutor close to the deal, we could talk about an amount of 1.5-2 billion rubles.

Sberbank signed an agreement on the sale of 100% of the Live Site with the founders of the company Timur Valishev and Nikolai Ivannikov, who, according to the terms of the agreement, will remain in Jivo after the transaction closes (scheduled for July 2021).

Sber bought a platform for communicating with Jivo customers

Sberbank plans to integrate Jivo into the bank's ecosystem, thus expanding the number of available communication channels with companies in its ecosystem for customers. In particular, it is expected that the platform will complement the possibilities of interaction with virtual assistants of the Salyut family on all surfaces of their presence, including mobile applications (Sberbank Online and Sber Salyut) and smart devices, as well as inside applications on the SmartMarket platform. Thanks to the integration of Jivo, entrepreneurs will receive a new effective communication channel with a multi-million audience of Sberbank services, and for users, communication with companies will become personalized, convenient and fast, the bank said.

Thanks to the integration of Jivo, entrepreneurs will receive a new effective communication channel with a multi-million audience of Sberbank services. For users, communication with companies will become personalized, convenient and fast, the bank said.

By early June 2021, the Jivo client communication platform combines receiving requests from instant messengers, applications, social networks, SMS, email and other channels, and also integrates with popular analytics, CRM and CMS systems. According to Timur Valishev, Jivo is the largest such service in Russia, which is used by more than 270 thousand sites.^[1]

2020: Changing the name to Jivo and transforming online chat into omnichannel business messenger

JivoSite, an online chat for communicating with customers, is transforming into an omnichannel business messenger that combines a set of solutions for communicating with customers in one application. At the same time, the company changes its name to Jivo. This became known on June 23, 2020. Read more here.

2017

At the time of the launch of JivoSite in Russia, there were about 20 similar services. To enter the market and introduce potential customers to the program, it was decided to use the Freemium model. The client himself could choose which package of services to use: free with limited functionality or paid with a full set of options.

The first clients were familiar entrepreneurs. In addition, Timur actively communicated on webmaster forums and offered to test his product for free in order to evaluate the convenience of the service.

Initially, the client could choose which functions from the paid package he needed and buy only them. But Timur quickly realized that this method of sales was unprofitable: the client took 1-2 services, so the margin was low. Then the company's policy changed: they began to sell only the full package in its entirety. The free version remained, but its functionality was minimal. The free version gave a large funnel, and the capabilities of the paid version provided good conversion. After some time, most customers realized that when it was connected, profits increased significantly. To push users to this solution, they launched automatic mailing. The letters talked about the possibilities of the paid version, and if the client could not make a decision for a long time, they offered a coupon for a discount. As a result, already in the first year, the program was installed by 11 thousand customers, and every tenth bought a paid version. In 2019, the number of users exceeded a quarter of a million, and the service itself is in the world top 3 in terms of the number of installations. According to Timur, the company's profit in 2017 amounted to $5 million.

After the project became popular in Russia, the creators decided to enter the international market. This required not only translating the product into a foreign language, but adapting the business to the realities of another country.

In the United States, the difficulty was not only to infiltrate the already rather saturated market. In the minds of Americans, Russian programmers were firmly associated with hackers, so local entrepreneurs were wary of the made in Russia software. To pass for their own, the company opened an office in Delaware and hired local employees. In addition, it was necessary to change the name: the Americans did not correlate the word site with the online consultation service. Therefore, the name was changed to JivoChat. In addition to the difficulties of winning customers, completely unexpected problems arose in the developed market. For example, in the fall of 2017, many American banks began to close accounts owned by Russian companies.

The implementation of Latin America was more successful. There were few such services, and the need for them turned out to be very pronounced. In addition, according to Timur, Latinos turned out to be close to Russians in mentality. It was easy to find a common language with them and understand how to promote a paid version of the product. There were no problems with personnel: in Latin America there were many young people working remotely for US startups and having the necessary experience.

But the conquest of the Asian market was not easy. Many companies were not going to purchase paid versions, preferring to increase the load on operators. A separate server had to be allocated for one large client from China to cope with the flow of traffic. Nevertheless, Timur does not abandon attempts to understand the mentality of Asians and conquer this market.

2013

Since young people from the very beginning decided to abandon borrowed funds, they could not afford to hire technical support and salesmen. Timur took over these functions. When sales increased, the guys hired three more technical support employees. A small staff somewhat restrained business development, because it did not allow full promotion, but made it possible not to take loans.

Only a year and a half later, in August 2013, the company hired the first salesmen. This contributed to a twofold increase in sales of the paid version of the service and caused the need to increase the staff of technical support. Most of the employees worked remotely - this made it possible not to pay the office rent and made it possible to cover all time zones: from the Far East to Kaliningrad. Now the company employs about 130 people, 30 of them are foreigners. And although the company now has an office, most employees work remotely. But once a year, the whole team definitely comes together. According to Timur, such meetings help maintain a fighting attitude and set new goals. The company assumes all expenses.

2011-2012

In 2011, Baumanka student Timur Valishev thought about the development of Octoline, one of the founders and shareholders of which he was. An online consultant could be a way to tell customers about the product and increase sales. But none of the services available at that time on the market did not suit Timur: the functionality seemed too narrow, the interface was inconvenient, and the price was too high. Then the young programmer came up with a thought: probably, there are many who would like to use a more convenient and functional online communication service with clients. If there is no such service yet, it needs to be created. So in 2012, JivoSite^[2] appeared^[3].

In his online consultant, Timur wanted to eliminate all the shortcomings that he did not like in existing services. According to his idea, the program was supposed to be convenient, intuitive and have an attractive design. He was also going to set a low price tag so that the client did not have the feeling that he was overpaying. As a criterion, Timur chose an amount that he himself would be ready to pay for a similar service.

Valishev suggested that classmate Nikolai Ivannikov develop his own program that would allow the company's managers to communicate conveniently and effectively with visitors to the site. The main target audience, according to the developers, was to be the owners of online stores. It was important to make working with the messenger as simple and understandable as possible so that the client could independently install the program and use it. Among other things, this made it possible to significantly save on technical support.

Young people decided to do without loans and invested their own funds in opening a business - 120 thousand rubles. The money went to register Live Site LLC, buy a template on WordPress and rent a virtual server. Timur received 75% of the company's shares, Nikolai received 25%. They decided to refuse to rent an office at this stage: the specifics of the business made it possible to work directly from home. As Valishev admits, there was no detailed business plan. The guys just analyzed Russian and American competitors to make a clear idea of ​ ​ what their program should be. They decided to focus on small and medium-sized businesses.

Notes