Cloud telephony firm Exotel acquires voice-based social media startup Croak.it

Bangalore-based cloud telephony startup Exotel Techcom Pvt Ltd, has acquired Singapore's voice-based social media startup Croak.it, as per separate media reports. The company did not disclose the terms of the acquisition.

As per the deal, Croak.it's founders Protik Roychowdhury and Srinivasa Teja will join the board of the company.

"There was a good overlap in the nature of the problem we were solving. Voice will continue to remain at the centre of most business communications," Shivakumar Ganesan, co-founder, Exotel, told The Economic Times.

In March 2012, Exotel had secured Rs 2.5 crore ($0.5 million) from Mumbai Angels and Blume Ventures.

Exotel was launched four years ago by Ganesan, who teamed up with Ishwar Sridharan, Siddharth Ramesh and Vijay Sharma (who quit last year) to start the venture. An alumnus of BITS Pilani, Ganeshan had earlier launched Roopit, a real-time micro classifieds platform integrated with voice and SMS. Before exploring the entrepreneurial space, he had worked with companies Yahoo! and Flipkart.

Exotel enables companies to manage customers on inbound voice calls and SMS without getting into the hassles of setting up a full-fledged call centre. It has clients like Ola, Zivame, RedBus, among others.

Croak.it is an app that allows users to share their thoughts and emotions using voice known as 'croaks' instead of typing it.

Exotel competes with Sequoia-backed Knowlarity which had bought Unicom Techlabs, for an undisclosed amount.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)