A91-backed cloud telephony platform Exotel raises $35 Mn in Series C funding

Cloud telephony company Exotel has raised $35 million as part of its Series C financing round from IIFL AMC, Sistema Asia Fund, CX Partners and Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund. 

Existing investors Blume Ventures and A91 Partners also participated in this round. Arun Sarin, former CEO of Vodafone also joined the round as an angel investor, the company said in a statement. 

The decade-old company said it will use the fresh funds to boost its product offerings. 

In January this year, the company had closed a $5.47 million Series B funding round from A91 Partners, Blume Ventures and others. 

Exotel had announced a merger with contact centre software provider Ameyo in June this year in a bid to address the fast-growing market for cloud-based contact centre services. 

“The combined entity [Exotel and Ameyo] will focus on building a full-stack customer engagement platform in the emerging markets to accelerate communication to the cloud and providing conversational AI capabilities for improved customer experience. The organisation is currently growing 70% YoY and is at an ARR of $45 million,” Exotel said in a statement. 

The Bengaluru-based company which was co-founded by Shivakumar Ganesan, Ishwar Sridharan, Vijay Sharma and Siddharth Ramesh in 2011, counts Ola, Flipkart, GoJek, and HDFC Bank, among others as its clients. It offers voice and SMS contact center capabilities to help its clients manage their customer engagement over the cloud.

One of its co-founders, Vijay Sharma, had later quit the company in 2014 to build predictive outbound hiring solution Belong. 

According to Exotel, its services are used by more than 6,000 companies across India, USA, SE Asia, Middle East, Australia, and Africa.

Exotel claimed that it was looking to hit an annual revenue rate (ARR) of $200 million over the next 5 years and planning to increase its headcount by 200 over the next 12 months.