Excl: Cloud telephony firm Big V Telecom looking to raise over $6.5M in funding

Big V Telecom Pvt Ltd, a Nagpur-based cloud telephony firm, is looking to raise Rs 40 crore (over $6.5 million) in funding, a source privy to the development informed Techcircle.in. The company has also appointed Surmount Advisors as banker for the proposed funding.

The funds will be invested to fuel the company's expansion plans, as well as for marketing and technology upgrade. While the company already has offices in Nagpur and Bangalore, it is planning to open new ones in Delhi and Pune to cater to large clients. It is also considering a global foray into Southeast Asian markets.

Founded in 2008 by Keshor Daga (managing director), the startup offers telephony solutions to small and mid-sized businesses. It has already deployed solutions like Your Own Call Center (YOCC) technology, telephony value added services (VAS), bulk voice calling and SMS gateway solutions.

"Efficient, strong and customisable telephony solutions are today's need and they strengthen the foundation of every business by bringing faster and greater business growth. With a range of telephony solutions, Big V proves to be the ideal partner assisting to transform business opportunities into successful business ventures," reads a statement on the company's website.

According to the company, its clientele includes BSNL, TV18's Commoditycontrol.com, Meghe Group, among others.

This will be the first round of funding for Big V, which was the first startup to be enrolled for design company Tata Elxsi's incubation programme incub@TE. The incubation agreement was signed between Madhukar Dev, MD and CEO of Tata Elxsi and Daga in July 2013.

Deals in cloud telephony space in 2014

Earlier this month, Hyderabad-headquartered Ozonetel Systems Ltd, a provider of on-demand cloud communication services for enterprises, acquired the speech recognition vertical of enterprise IT firm YantraSoft Inc. in an equity-plus-earn-out deal. While the financials of the deal remain undisclosed, as per the agreement, all employees of YantraSoft's speech recognition vertical will join Ozonetel.

Last month, Cloud telephony firm Knowlarity Communications Pvt Ltd had raised $15 million (around Rs 90 crore) in its Series B round of funding led by Mayfield Fund. Existing investor Sequoia Capital also participated in this round. The funding will be used to invest in R&D and expand internationally.

In January this year, Knowlarity acquired Unicom Techlabs Pvt Ltd, a Delhi-based cloud telephony startup, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition brought Unicom's 200 plus customers in SMB, e-commerce, real estate, healthcare, education and media segment under Knowlarity.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)