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Blume-seeded Exotel gets funding from A91 Partners

By Joseph Rai

  • 10 Dec 2020
Blume-seeded Exotel gets funding from A91 Partners
Credit: 123RF.com

Exotel Techcom Pvt Ltd has pulled in fresh funding from venture capital firm A91 Partners more than eight years after the cloud telephony platform had raised seed funding from Blume Ventures and Mumbai Angels.

Exotel has raised Rs 40 crore ($5.43 million) from A91 Partners, floated by former executives of Sequoia Capital, The Economic Times reported.

VCCircle has reached out to Exotel to get more details on the funding.

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Exotel was launched in 2011 by Shivakumar Ganesan, who teamed up with Ishwar Sridharan, Siddharth Ramesh and Vijay Sharma to start the venture. Sharma quit the company later.

The startup says it helps to set up a secure and reliable business phone system on the cloud with no additional infrastructure or equipment required.

Exotel had raised seed funding from Blume Ventures and Mumbai Angels in early 2012. It did not raise external capital since then even as its revenue has seen a remarkable jump.

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The company's net sales more than doubled to Rs 76 crore in the fiscal ended March 2019 from Rs 27.6 crore in 2015-16, according to VCCEdge, the research arm of Mosaic Digital. The company has also posted operating profit in the three years to March 2019.

In an interaction with VCCircle, Blume Ventures' partner Ashish Fafadia had singled out Exotel as one of its portfolio firms from which the early-stage venture capital firm could walk away with good returns.

In 2015, Exotel made two acquisitions: Croak.it, a voice-based social media startup, and Voyce, a platform that allows businesses to gather customer feedback.

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A91 Partners was floated in 2018 by former Sequoia Capital executives VT Bharadwaj, Gautam Mago and Abhay Pandey. The trio had left Sequoia between June 2017 and August 2018. In November last year, Kaushik Anand quit as the India head of CapitalG to join A91 Partners.

Last month, VCCircle reported that the venture firm was gearing up to launch its second India-focussed fund.

Earlier this week, A91 Partners led a Series B funding in its existing portfolio firm Atomberg Technology Pvt. Ltd.

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Other companies A91 Partners has backed include spices maker Pushp, non-banking financial company Aye Finance Pvt. Ltd, beverage brand Paper Boat, and make-up brand Sugar Cosmetics.

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