Exotel, a Bengaluru-based company that runs a full-stack customer engagement platform, has raised $40 million (Rs 298 crore) in a Series D funding round led by London-based Steadview Capital.
The funding announcement comes three months after Sistema Asia Capital, IIFL, CX Partners, Blume Ventures, A91, and Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund raised $35 million from a group of investors that included Sistema Asia Capital, IIFL, CX Partners, Blume Ventures, A91, and Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund.
Exotel will use this round of funding to invest more in the Middle East and Southeast Asia markets, for potential acquisitions that add more omnichannel and full-stack capabilities to the platform, and to enable growth.
Exotel, which has raised nearly $100 million in funding, assists its clients in engaging with their customers via touchpoints such as web chat, co-browsing, and videos. A contact centre, APIs, voice, and chatbots are among the platform’s offerings.
Exotel, founded in 2011 by Vijay Sharma, Shivakumar Ganesan, Ishwar Sridharan, and Siddharth Ramesh, has attracted many big corporate names, including Ola, HDFC Bank, Quikr, Swiggy, and Zerodha, to use its platform to engage with customers.
Exotel claims to have $50 million in annualised recurring revenue (ARR), which is growing at a rate of 70 percent per year, with a goal of reaching $200 million in ARR over the next four years. Aside from that, the startup has acquired over 1300 customers in the last year, including ITC Salaam in Saudi Arabia, Bajaj Allianz, City Mall, Krazybee, Shadowfax, and TCS.
“Enterprises want to unify their customer journeys to deliver connected experiences across touchpoints like web chat, co-browsing, video, etc., 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,” said Shivakumar Ganesan (Shivku), CEO & Co-founder of Exotel.
Commenting on the deal, Ravi Mehta, CIO & Founder of Steadview Capital, said “Customer engagement is critical to businesses across India, APAC, and EMEA, especially in light of the ongoing impact of the pandemic.”
“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. Steadview couldn’t be more excited to support Exotel in the next phase of its journey,” he adds.
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