Cloud telephony firm Knowlarity raises $15M in Series B from Mayfield, Sequoia

Cloud telephony firm Knowlarity Communications Pvt Ltd has raised $15 million (around Rs 90 crore) in its Series B round of funding led by Mayfield Fund, as per a company statement. Existing investor Sequoia Capital also participated in this round.

The funding will be used to invest in R&D and expand internationally.

Knowlarity claims it has 6,500 clients in 66 countries and with this funding it plans to use the same model to increase its presence in other overseas markets.

Ambarish Gupta, CEO & Founder, Knowlarity Communications, said, "Knowlarity is to communications what AWS (Amazon Web Services) is to applications. Knowlarity provides the tools needed by businesses to build today and scale tomorrow."

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.

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 their existing IT systems.

The firm, which moved its headquarters to Singapore some time ago, has offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore. Currently, the firm operates in more than 66 countries and its flagship products, SuperReceptionist and SmartIVR, can process over a million calls an hour.

Recently the firm acquired Delhi-based cloud telephony startup Unicom Techlabs Pvt Ltd for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition brings Unicom's 200 plus customers in SMB, e-commerce, real estate, healthcare, education and media segments under Knowlarity.

In an interview with Techcircle.in last July, Ambarish Gupta had said that the company was shifting its base to Singapore, owing to a tough market in India. According to him, the Indian cloud telephony market is extremely tough to survive and many players will either shut shop or merge, as SMEs and other enterprises in India are not ready to pay much and many of them have don't have much money.

Early last year, its co-founder and COO Pallav Pandey had quit the company to start a new venture.

Mayfield, a technology-focused investor in Silicon Valley, made its final close of its second India-dedicated fund at $108 million early this year. This is a successor to Mayfield India I, which had raised $111 million in late 2008 and the VC firm has been investing in the country through this fund. It had put in more money in an existing portfolio firm Securens early this year.

Sequoia has been pretty active and has invested in close to half a dozen new firms since January 1 and has put in more money in an equal number of existing portfolio firms in the same period.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)