Exotel raises USD 35 mn funding from IIFL AMC, Sistema Asia Fund, others

Customer communication platform Exotel on Wednesday said it has raised USD 35 million (about Rs 259.5 crore) in funding from IIFL AMC, Sistema Asia Fund, CX Partners, Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund, and others.

Existing investors, Blume Ventures and A91 Partners also participated in the Series C round, a statement said.

Arun Sarin, the former Chief Executive Officer of Vodafone, has also joined the round as an angel investor and a mentor, it added.

This fresh infusion of funds will be used primarily to boost the product offerings of the company, the statement said.

In June this year, Exotel and Ameyo (which offers a contact centre platform) announced a merger.

''The combined entity 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 per cent year-on-year and is at an ARR (annual recurring revenue) of USD 45 million,'' the statement said on Wednesday.

Exotel is looking to hit an ARR of USD 200 million over the next five years, and is planning to increase its headcount by 200 over the next 12 months, it added.

The current headcount stands at about 650.

''We're building the market's first cloud-based full-stack engagement suite by bringing in Ameyo's contact center capabilities on top of Exotel's cloud communication infrastructure,” Exotel Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder Shivakumar Ganesan said.

He added that the platform will offer an easy way for businesses to communicate with customers over voice, chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and video without losing context.

Sachin Bhatia, CEO of Ameyo, said the convergence of customer data coupled with conversational AI capabilities will enable enterprises to monitor conversations, build smarter bots and assist customer service teams in real-time.

Sumit Jain, Senior Partner at Sistema Asia Fund, noted that CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) is a USD 6 billion market in India and SEA (South East Asia) and one of the fastest-growing technology areas in the post-COVID world.

''Exotel has quietly emerged as the CPaaS platform of choice in India through their market-best reliability and comprehensive product suite. We are delighted to partner with them and expect them to become a globally relevant platform in the years to come,” he added.

Bengaluru-based IndigoEdge was the exclusive banker for the transaction, the statement said.