Updated: We Are Not Shutting Down, Says Exotel; Hits Back At Knowlarity

From the past few days, there have been a lot of rumors spreading across social media sites, ignited from the Secret App about Exotel shutting down. Exotel has remained numb on this uptill now. But things appear to be quite exhausting for the Exotel team and it has sent an email to it’s users clarifying the situation and clearly stating that they are not shutting down at all.

With this, the email has also taken a direct shot at its competitor Knowlarity which allegedly had taken advantage of the situation and sent out mails to Exotel’s existing users to switch to its services because of Exotel seizing operations.

Even when Exotel founder, Shivku wrote to the CEO of Knowlarity about these emails and phone calls to Exotel’s clients, he suggested that these were merely the result of us “competing for the same customer base.”

Here is the snapshot of the mail:

Here is the mail sent by Knowlarity.

Listen to the call from Knowlarity to Exotel’s customers.

Update: Knowlarity Denies Exotel Claims, Accuses Exotel For Copying Their Product Features

Denying the claims made by Exotel, Knowlarity has issued a statement:

We are surprised by the mass emailer sent by Exotel to their customers and what seems like everyone in the Indian startup community. We look at our competitors as fellow entrepreneurs excited about the same business. We even lead a Cloud Telephony Consortium and helped Exotel present to government bodies and influence TRAI regulations. Clearly that spirit is not reciprocated.

As stated by Exotel in the mass-mailer, the market rumour has been around for some time about the difficulties they are facing and the “shutdown”. We do not know or care if that is true or not. We had been doing this business for two years before Exotel was born. We have always focused on customers and technology rather than competitors and that’s what makes us the market leader.

Like all companies, some of Exotel’s customers are happy and many are not. They look for alternatives and we happen to be the oldest, largest and most scalable one. Many customers choose to be with us. We do not have any policy about responding to market intelligence but we are not surprised if some customers care about this and one salesperson (out of 450 employees) furnished this information.

As for the recording, we fail to understand the connection with us. The only “Anurag” we have in Bangalore is notoriously bad at Hindi. We are still searching for this elusive “Anurag”.

We are sad that we have to be engaged in such a duel. We have documentary evidence of Exotel copying our product features, poaching our customers and now this slander. Publishing it in the media is a waste of energy. We chose instead to focus on building our business. We will continue to do so.