Customer Engagement Startup Exotel Bags $40 Mn In Series D Funding

Customer engagement startup Exotel has raised $40 Mn in a Series D funding round led by Steadview Capital. Till now, the startup has raised over $100 Mn in debt and equity funding including this new round. 

Founded in 2011 by Shivakumar Ganesan, Exotel merged with call centre platform Ameyo and acquired conversational AI platform Cogno AI last year to become a ‘full-stack’ customer engagement platform. 

According to the startup, it has an annualised recurring revenue (ARR) of $50 Mn and is growing at a rate of 70%, with a target to hit an ARR of $200 Mn in the next four years. It claims to have acquired more than 1,300 customers in the last year including Bajaj Allianz, City Mall, Krazybee and TCS.

“Enterprises want to unify their customer journeys to deliver connected experiences across Touchpoints including 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, CEO and cofounder of Exotel.

The startup will utilise the freshly-infused capital towards investments in the Middle East and Southeast Asia markets. It is also on the lookout for more acquisitions as it adds more capabilities to its platform. 

“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,” said Ravi Mehta, CIO and founder of Steadview Capital.

The global customer service software market size is estimated to be worth $1 Bn in 2020 and is expected to grow to $2.5 Bn in 2025, at a CAGR of 20.4% during the forecast period. The growing demand for advanced analytics-based solutions to monitor customer scores and reduce churn rates is expected to be a key driver for the market.

Update: We have updated the funding amount to reflect the accurate number

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