Full stack customer engagement platform Exotel raises $40 million from Steadview Capital & Others
Exotel has secured $40 million in a Series D round headed by Steadview Capital, as the cloud telephony startup wants to transition into a full-stack customer engagement platform and expands its footprint in markets such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
The ten-year-old company, which has operated on a shoestring budget for the majority of its existence, said the latest round of funding increases its total capital raised in the last 15 months to around $100 million. Exotel wants to expand as quickly as the demand for cloud telephony has skyrocketed as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Shivakumar Ganesan, the company's cofounder and CEO, said the company is transitioning from a platform that allows businesses to interact with their consumers to one that allows them to engage with them through chat, audio, email, video, and bots.
“Enterprises want to unify their customer journeys to deliver connected experiences across touchpoints like web chat, co-browsing, video, etc,” Ganesan said. “This involves bringing together disconnected channels, bots, applications with siloed customer data across teams. For the first time we are enabling this over the cloud with our full-stack platform.”
Exotel, through its merger with contact centre platform Ameyo and acquisition of conversational artificial intelligence platform Cogno AI last year, is fueling some of this demand. The company stated that it will continue to explore for acquisition opportunities that will allow it to provide clients with a full-stack experience.
It has over 1,300 customers, including ITC Salaam in Saudi Arabia, Bajaj Allianz, City Mall, Krazybee, Shadowfax, and Tata Consultancy Services in the last year. The company claims that their annualised recurring revenue (ARR) has surpassed $50 million and is increasing at a rate of 70%.
“Customer engagement is critical to businesses across India, APAC and EMEA, especially in light of the ongoing impact of the pandemic,” said Ravi Mehta, founder of Steadview Capital. “Exotel has grown rapidly to emerge as the clear category leader for solving such problems, enabling its customers to more easily communicate with consumers across engagement channels.”
The ten-year-old company, which has operated on a shoestring budget for the majority of its existence, said the latest round of funding increases its total capital raised in the last 15 months to around $100 million. Exotel wants to expand as quickly as the demand for cloud telephony has skyrocketed as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Shivakumar Ganesan, the company's cofounder and CEO, said the company is transitioning from a platform that allows businesses to interact with their consumers to one that allows them to engage with them through chat, audio, email, video, and bots.
“Enterprises want to unify their customer journeys to deliver connected experiences across touchpoints like web chat, co-browsing, video, etc,” Ganesan said. “This involves bringing together disconnected channels, bots, applications with siloed customer data across teams. For the first time we are enabling this over the cloud with our full-stack platform.”
Exotel, through its merger with contact centre platform Ameyo and acquisition of conversational artificial intelligence platform Cogno AI last year, is fueling some of this demand. The company stated that it will continue to explore for acquisition opportunities that will allow it to provide clients with a full-stack experience.
It has over 1,300 customers, including ITC Salaam in Saudi Arabia, Bajaj Allianz, City Mall, Krazybee, Shadowfax, and Tata Consultancy Services in the last year. The company claims that their annualised recurring revenue (ARR) has surpassed $50 million and is increasing at a rate of 70%.
“Customer engagement is critical to businesses across India, APAC and EMEA, especially in light of the ongoing impact of the pandemic,” said Ravi Mehta, founder of Steadview Capital. “Exotel has grown rapidly to emerge as the clear category leader for solving such problems, enabling its customers to more easily communicate with consumers across engagement channels.”
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