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Voice and Messaging Apps Platform Provider Plivo Raises Seed Round From Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Qualcomm and SV Angel
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Dec 03, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) --
Voice and messaging applications platform provider Plivo
(www.plivo.com) announced today that it has closed a $1.75M seed
round of financing from investment firms Andreessen Horowitz, Battery
Ventures, Qualcomm Incorporated and SV Angel.
Launched in December 2011, Plivo is disrupting the hosted telephony
space with the most scalable and feature-rich voice and messaging
platform wrapped with flexible APIs and backed by 24/7 support. Plivo
provides the highest level of reliability for enterprises that need a
hosted environment for their voice and messaging applications, and
enables enterprises, service providers and web developers to build
applications that seamlessly integrate the web with telephony, both
fixed and mobile.
"What Amazon did for web hosting in the cloud, Plivo is doing for
telephony hosting," said Venky Balasubramanian, Co-Founder of Plivo.
Venky co-founded Plivo with Mike Ricordeau in late 2011 -- the two
developers met when they were both searching for a robust
communications platform to develop voice applications. Finding none
on the market, they collaborated to develop and launch the Plivo
Cloud platform.
"There are three key aspects to building voice and messaging apps,"
Venky explained. "Establishing carrier contracts, building the
technology for the infrastructure and then a team for operating and
scaling it. We discovered it's easy for our customers to get carrier
contracts in place once they have decent volumes, so there's little
value-add for a platform provider to resell minutes. So instead of
focusing on just reselling carrier minutes, we concentrated on
building a platform that offers the most reliable infrastructure and
the highest level of scale with no carrier lock-in. We do provide
carrier services if needed by our customers; we have local phone
numbers in 50 countries. The market response to our platform has been
incredibly positive."
Since Plivo Cloud went live just a few months ago, the company has
quietly signed on dozens of enterprise-class customers.
One of them is Imprezzio, a software solutions company that works
primarily with Fortune 100 insurance and financial customers.
"Reliability and scalability are our top priorities, given the
business our clients are in," said Kelly Birr, CIO at Imprezzio.
"Before switching to Plivo, we used another provider that essentially
forced us to use their carrier contracts, at a huge markup, and just
didn't deliver on the reliability side. Our experience with Plivo has
been completely different -- the company and its platform are
flexible and easy to work with, yet rock solid. They have exceeded
our expectations at every turn."
According to research firm Frost & Sullivan, the market opportunity
for hosted telephony is large and growing. A 2011 Frost & Sullivan
survey of 205 North American C-level executives and IT professionals
found that 40 percent of respondents are using hosted services today,
and 67 percent of current users plan to increase their usage over the
next 12 months. Further, the firm expects the North American hosted
IP Telephony and UC services installed base to grow at a 29.9 percent
compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2011 to 2018.(1)
"We are very excited about our investment in Plivo," said Roger Lee,
General Partner at Battery Ventures. "Hosted telephony is poised to
explode as more companies move their applications to the cloud.
Plivo's technology delivers incredible value to enterprise customers
and has the potential to seriously disrupt the space. We're proud to
partner with the management team and support the company to help
drive growth and capture the opportunity ahead."
According to Venky, Plivo plans to use the seed money primarily for
continued innovation, sales and marketing. Plivo currently has 17
employees, and plans to have more than 20 by year's end. It will also
be expanding its platform beyond voice and messaging into areas such
as video and WebRTC, which will enable applications such as voice
calls and video chat without plugins. "As more web browsers support
WebRTC, we're seeing strong interest from our customers," said Mike
Ricordeau. "We're well down the WebRTC development path and will make
some exciting product announcements later in the year."
About Plivo
Plivo eliminates the complexity from telephony by
providing the most scalable and feature-rich voice and messaging
platform wrapped with flexible APIs and backed by 24/7 support. Plivo
enables enterprises, service providers and web developers to rapidly
deploy voice and SMS applications fully integrated into web sites or
any telephony endpoint fixed or mobile. Customers have the option to
bring their own carrier service or leverage Plivo's. Learn more about
Plivo's quality, scale and flexible delivery models at www.plivo.com.
(1) Frost & Sullivan, "2012 North American Hosted IP Telephony and UC
Services Market Share Leadership Award," July 2012.
Plivo and Plivo Cloud are trademarks or registered trademarks of
Plivo Inc. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of
their respective owners.
For information, contact:
Michelle Faulkner
Big Swing Communications
+1 617-510-6998
Email Contact
SOURCE: Plivo
http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct id=A3839EB6781A24A5
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