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Exotel, a Bangalore-based cloud telephony company, has launched a research division called Exotel Labs to spur innovation in the voice space.
Siddharth Ramesh, co-founder and CTO, Exotel, said, “Communication is at the core of most businesses in India. Exotel Labs is our research division which will focus on an innovative approach to solving problems in the voice space.”
Exotel Labs will have a team of researchers specializing in machine learning, data mining and signal processing. The company has already roped in Balaraman Lakshmanan, the founder of Crispify, as a Research Software Development Engineer. His role will include solving major problems in the domains of voice and speech analysis, data mining and machine learning.
Balaraman said that the voice space in India has a massive potential for development and Exotel is the first to tap into this potential. At Exotel Labs, Balaraman and his team will be responsible for analyzing calls algorithmically, to provide data on calls and connectivity.
In the next six months, Exotel Labs plans to add 10 more people to the team and hire talent in the field of research. It also plans to collaborate with universities to encourage research in the above mentioned areas.
Exotel was founded by Shivakumar Ganesan, Ishwar Sridharan and Siddharth Ramesh in 2011 with an aim to solve the pain points of managing calls and SMSes from customers, without getting into the hassles of a full-fledged call centre or having to be bound to one phone. It currently powers communication for over 1000 businesses including brands like Ola, Uber, Flipkart etc.
In 2015, Exotel acquired Voyce, a platform which allowed businesses to gather customer feedback, and Croak.it, a voice sharing social media startup.
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