[Funding alert] Ozonetel raises $5M in Series A from Stakeboat Capital

Hyderabad and San Francisco-based Ozonetel, a provider of on-demand cloud communication services, has raised $5 million in Series A round from Stakeboat Capital, a private equity fund based out of Bengaluru.

The startup will use the funding to expand its US operations and double its headcount in the coming year.

Chandrasekar Kandasamy, Managing Partner, Stakeboat Capital, said, “The pandemic has changed the way enterprises are approaching their call centre operations. With Ozonetel’s disruptive CCaaS and CPaaS platforms, businesses will be able to turn call centres into profit centres. This is even more critical in the new remote work environment post-COVID-19. We are very excited about the possibilities.”

This Series A round will enable the company to grow its sales and marketing teams in the US while continuing to focus on SEA and the Middle East, and expanding its presence in India.

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Founded in 2010, Ozonetel was one of the first CCaaS (Contact/Call Centre as a Service) players in India. It provides omnichannel call centre services to businesses of all sizes – from large enterprises to startups. The startup claims that more than 100,000 call centre agents use Ozonetel’s CCaaS platform ‘CloudAgent’ every day.

Speaking on the funding, CSN Murthy, Founder and CEO of Ozonetel, said, “This is a very important juncture for us to scale our business, and we are particularly looking to grow our footprint in the US. We plan to reach $100 million ARR in the next four years. This investment from Stakeboat Capital validates our vision to provide a unified, omnichannel call/contact centre experience to enterprises.

COVID-19 has accelerated CCaaS adoption the world over. During the pandemic, Ozonetel claims to have witnessed a 100 percent surge in its business growth and has doubled its customer base over the last 12 months.

It has clients across verticals including healthcare, retail, BFSI, education, real estate, and IT. The firm has helped enterprises move 15,000 of their agents to a work-from-home setup within a span of two weeks. 

"We have consciously stayed bootstrapped since inception and focused on creating industry-leading tech. We are now thrilled to have an active and supportive investor with us as we take our tech to more global markets," added CSN Murthy.

Ozonetel entered the US market in 2019 and has onboarded channel partners and customers. The startup now plans to launch an AI-driven Unified Channel Experience Management (UCXM) platform for voice and digital channels. This aims to empower businesses to design and deliver consistent customer experience across communication channels. 

In a statement, the startup claimed that its cloud telephony platform claims to handle more than 10 million calls per day. It added that over 10,000 developers use Ozonetel’s CPaaS (Communications Platform-as-a-Service) platform to integrate voice, SMS, WhatsApp and other communication channels into their products.