Gerardo Salandra (born 1992) is a Salvadoran businessman and technology executive, best known as the co-founder and CEO of respond.io, a software company that provides an AI-powered, omnichannel business messaging platform. [1] Salandra was included in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2020 for Enterprise Technology. [2]
Gerardo Salandra was born in 1992 in El Salvador to an Italian family. His parents enrolled him in a German school, where he became fluent in Spanish, Italian, German, and English. [3]
Salandra earned a Bachelor of Science degree in international business from Reutlingen University in Germany. He then completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. [4]
Salandra began his career in the tech industry with roles at IBM and Google, working in areas such as artificial intelligence and marketing automation. He then worked at Runtastic, a mobile fitness app company prior to its acquisition by Adidas. [1]
In 2017, Salandra co-founded a Hong Kong-based AI startup called Rocketbots, focusing on chatbot and messaging technology. Rocketbots was launched as an omnichannel messaging inbox by Salandra and his co-founders, Hassan Ahmed and Iaroslav Kudritskiy. The startup rebranded as respond.io in 2019 and relocated its headquarters to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. [5]
Under his leadership, respond.io adopted a product-led growth strategy and broadened its platform beyond chatbots to a full customer messaging hub. The company raised a US$1.8 million pre-Series A round in 2019 and a US$7 million Series A funding in 2022, led by Headline Asia and other investors. [6] By 2022, respond.io was used by over 10,000 brands in 86 countries, processing more than 140 million messages per month. [7]
In its Series A milestone in 2022, respond.io announced plans to expand beyond Asia into the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America, using the new funding to integrate more enterprise software capabilities and scale its infrastructure. [8] In 2023, the company introduced AI features, leveraging generative AI and LLMs to enable users to create AI agents that learned from business documentation and websites. They are used for lead qualification, answering inquiries and routing to human agents. The technology was first unveiled at GITEX Global in Dubai. [9]
Salandra also serves as the chairman of the Artificial Intelligence Society of Hong Kong, a professional association dedicated to AI development and education. [10]
Salandra was included in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in the Enterprise Technology category in 2020. [2] In 2023, he was recognized by Fortune for respond.io's rapid growth. [8]