Eki Communications Raises Rs 1.12Cr From Blume, Rajiv Dadlani Group

Mumbai-based Eki Communications Pvt Ltd has raised Rs 1.12 crore ($250,000) in its angel round from Blume Ventures and the Rajiv Dadlani Group, a consortium of angel investors. The funds will be used for business expansion, strengthen Eki's sales and strategic alliances team and extending support for its product Call Recall across diverse mobile platforms.

Karthik Reddy or Sanjay Nath from Blume Ventures and Rajiv Dadlani will join the company's board. Recently, Blume and Rajiv Dadlani invested Rs 1.3 crore in another Mumbai-based company Adepto Solutions which has a social commerce platform Trol.ly.

Eki Communications was set up in 2009 by Mandar Vaidya, along with partners Kavi Panjwani, Mahesh Labhe and Abhijit Deshpande. It offers custom software as a service platform for mobile collaboration named Call Recall which it has further refined for three domains – Call Recall Auto, Call Recall Insure and Call Recall Serv.

With Call Recall, enterprises can empower their field agents using mobile devices to share, search and transfer key information in a secure manner.

Eki's CEO & Co-founder Mandar Vaidya shared with Techcircle.in that the product strategy is to provide an enterprise with the ability to bridge the last-mile-connectivity with the field force for sales, service, inspections and other functions. "The initial product version had a limited feature set and operating system support and has now evolved into a mature offering with support for text, image, voice, video with time and location context. The emphasis has been on the ease of use on the field and integration with enterprise information systems," he explained.

Enterprises are charged on per mobile, per month subscription model. "The subscription cost per month is dependent on a number of factors such as feature and workflow provision, mobile device support and varies across a wide range," says Vaidya.

Among the three verticals, automotive sector is currently the biggest contributor to revenues (80 per cent) and the company boasts Tata Motors as a client. Call Recall Auto has over 180 enterprise deployments in 14 states. The platform supports Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile and J2ME platforms and an iOS release is on the cards. It also integrates with SAP, NetSuite, Oracle CRM and MS Dynamics.

According to Karthik Reddy, managing partner of Blume Ventures, "Corporates experience a quantum jump in their productivity by creation, tagging, transmission, archival, searching and sharing knowledge, which is simplified using Eki's Call Recall platform. Improvement and collaboration of information flow take places smoothly and on real-time basis within their organisations."

Rajiv Dadlani, the lead angel investor who also runs Mumbai-based boutique investment bank Consort Capital said, "Archives of knowledge can help organisations satisfy customer needs and take on greater challenges. Eki has created an awesome platform Call Recall, which leverages the potential of smartphones, integrated with web technologies, to take knowledge flowing within organisations on a real-time basis, to the next level. Further, among the founders, we noticed a cohesive team spirit along with a strong technology focus, which we feel are the key ingredients for success."

"This investment is a recognition of Eki's Enterprise Mobility vision, technical leadership and Call Recall platform's scalability across diverse field service domains. Our investment partners have a fine understanding of the enterprise mobility opportunity and other related verticals, having already made several investments. We are excited to have them on board and will surely benefit from their insights and networks," said Vaidya.