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December 03, 2012

Cloud-based Telephony App Platform Plivo Raises $1.75 Million in Funding


Plivo, a cloud-based platform that allows users to build telephony apps for SMS, phone calling, SIP and WebRTC, is reporting today that it has received a new round of funding. The company recently closed a $1.75M seed round of financing from investment firms Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Qualcomm Incorporated and SV Angel.

Plivo, a year-old startup company, says it’s 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. The company’s platform has been described as ideal 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, in a statement announcing the funding round. Venky co-founded Plivo with Mike Ricordeau.

"There are three key aspects to building voice and messaging apps," said Venky. "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 its launch, Plivo says it has acquired dozens of enterprise-class customers.




Edited by Brooke Neuman
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