Sequoia Capital-backed Knowlarity acquires cloud telephony startup Unicom

Gurgaon-based cloud telephony firm Knowlarity Communications has acquired Unicom Techlabs Pvt Ltd, a Delhi-based cloud telephony start-up, for an undisclosed amount, the company said on Monday.

The acquisition brings Unicom's 200 plus customers in SMB, e-commerce, real estate, healthcare, education and media segment under Knowlarity. Besides Unicom's IT domain and customers, Knowlarity will get full ownership of intellectual property belonging to the company.

Knowlarity is backed by Sequoia Capital which invested Rs 34 crore in the company in January 2012. Previously, it also raised funding from Emergic Venture Capital.

"We at Knowlarity are overwhelmed to have successfully acquired Unicom. It is also a great learning experience for all the consequent deals in the pipeline for 2014 which will take us further towards our goal of market consolidation. Knowlarity is more than willing to help startups looking for an exit option in a fast consolidating market.  We have more acquisitions planned in the coming year which is definitely a promising start to 2014 for all of us at Knowlarity," said Shruti Agarwal, CFO, Knowlarity.

The company's top management had earlier said it is open to acquiring a couple of firms and was looking for those Indian cloud firms that are currently facing problems and finding it difficult to survive in the market.

VoiceGain, a global player which was launched in 2012, has already shut down its operations in India.

Started in May 2012, Unicom introduced its cloud telephony service, Cloud Line, soon after inception. The company said it was on course to breach the Rs 1 crore milestone in revenue for 2014 before it chose to go with Knowlarity.

"Owing to the competitive edge in the IT sector, we decided to take the initiative of seeking help from the industry experts and Knowlarity being the leaders were among the finest options we had. We drew the deal to expose our customers to a more refined outlook, expert technological advancements and advanced ways of servicing the customers," said Puneet Kaura, founder of Unicom.

Founded in 2009 by IIT-Kanpur graduates Ambarish Gupta and Pallav Pandey, Knowlarity provides voice and data communication services over the internet to companies and individuals in India and Indonesia. The company's product range includes SuperFax, SuperReceptionist, SuperConference and SuperCaller. For larger enterprises, it is providing hosted IVR solutions integrated with its existing IT systems.

The firm operates in more than 65 countries, caters to 6,000 paid customers and 1 lakh free users and is on course to reaching an annual turnover of Rs 75 crore by 2015.

Its co-founder Pandey had left the firm last year and later joined web conferencing venture uniRow as COO.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)