Cloud telephony firm Knowlarity hires former OYO Rooms exec as CTO

Cloud telephony firm Knowlarity has appointed former OYO Rooms executive Ajay Shrivastava as its chief technology officer, a statement issued by the company stated.

In his previous role, Shrivastava led the technology vertical at the budget accommodation aggregator. He has also previously worked at Slideshare at LinkedIn, Intel, Adobe, Microsoft, and others. He is an alumnus of the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore.

"He (Ajay) is one of the most dynamic and respected leaders in the Indian technological sphere. He will help Knowlarity cement its leadership in the cloud telephony industry," said Ambarish Gupta, founder and chief executive of the firm in the press note.

The company is also launching a tech blog which will feature expert opinions, insights, stories and experiences from Knowlarity's engineering, design and product teams.

In its previous funding round in November last year, Knowlarity Communications Pvt. Ltd raised Rs 133 crores ($19.5 million) in Series C funding from Dubai-based private equity firm Delta Partners Capital, Sequoia Capital India and Mayfield Fund. The investment takes the total funds raised by Knowlarity so far to $41 million.

In July 2014, the firm raised $15 million (Rs 90 crore) in its Series B funding round from Mayfield Fund and Sequoia Capital.

The company has also made a couple of acquisitions. In May 2016, Knowlarity acquired Smartwards Services Pvt. Ltd, a customer engagement platform which enables offline retailers to identify, track and engage their existing customers and walk-ins.

In 2014, it had bought Unicom Techlabs Pvt. Ltd, a Delhi-based cloud telephony startup.

Knowlarity was founded in 2009 by IIT Kanpur graduates Gupta and Pallav Pandey. It offers cloud communications products such as SuperFax, SuperReceptionist, SuperConference and SuperCaller for enterprises. For larger companies, it provides interactive voice response solutions which can be integrated into their IT systems. The firm has its headquarters in Singapore with offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore. It claims to serve more than 15,000 customers.

Its clientele spans countries such as Singapore, the Philippines and UAE and includes Via.com, Deliveroo, Darwin Interior, Yoga+, Global Academy, Bayzat, High Speed Internet Service Technology LLC and others to name a few.