Exotel bets big on innovative applications built on its cloud telephony platform

As a nation which is home to more than 2 million SMBs, Exotel has seen huge growth coming from the Indian market for its cloud telephony platform. Founded by Shivakumar Ganesan, Ishwar Sridharan and Siddharth Ramesh in 2011, Exotel today powers voice communication for over a 1000 businesses including brands like Ola, Uber and Flipkart. Every day, the company enables over 3 million conversations between businesses and their customers.

In a conversation with Srikanth RP,  Shivakumar Ganesan, CEO & Co-Founder, Exotel, shares how Indian companies are building innovative applications using the firm’s cloud telephony platform

Some edited excerpts:

1. What is the potential and opportunity for cloud telephony in a country like India?

We are a country that loves to talk. The first thing we do when we want to reach out to a company is pick up the phone and call. Given this setup, cloud telephony is poised to become the norm. Much like how cloud computing has become the norm. You hardly hear of people setting up physical servers in their offices these days. When we started in 2011, there was a lot of customer education involved. Today, it’s not so much about education as businesses are aware of cloud telephony. We need to show them the proof of reliability of cloud telephony now.  With around 2 million SMEs in the country, in my estimate the market size is about $6 billion. So, we haven’t even scratched the surface of the potential, yet.

2. How has your firm grown in India? What are some of the innovative use cases?

We are one of India’s leading cloud telephony companies in terms of the number of calls we power everyday. Right now, we enable nearly 3 million customer conversations for businesses of all sizes. In 2015, we powered 430 million calls and 216 million SMSes. These numbers show us that we are on the right path of growth.

We help the top cab aggregators like Ola and Uber to ensure customer privacy through phone number anonymisation. This solution ensures that customers can talk to cab drivers without revealing their phone number. Given the importance of this solution in increasing customer trust, this played an important role in their growth story as well. Last year, we helped cab aggregators including Ola & Uber safeguard the privacy of 30 million people in the country.

We recently partnered with Pratham book, a not-for-profit book publisher that aims to put a book in every child’s hands. A bedtime story is something every child deserves to grow up with. However, some parents due to their circumstances are unable to give this to their child. So, we set up a number where a parent can give a missed call to listen to a story in a language of their choice. This was a phenomenal success. We were able to reach out over 3500 kids in about 4 days and we powered nearly 40,000 calls.

3. What is the potential and opportunity for telephony based APIs in a country like India?

We primarily work with startups and enterprises that are largely tech driven. And these companies derive the complete benefits of cloud telephony. One of the biggest advantages of using cloud telephony is that since your data is on the cloud, you can integrate this with other tools you use like your CRM, ticketing software etc. It also gives your team the best chance to have all the information they need at hand while talking to a customer.

For example, Ola uses videos a lot to train their drivers. But most of the time, they do not know if the videos are clear or if the drivers have understood the material. Also, getting someone to call every single driver is not a feasible option. So, they make automated calls to their drivers at the end of every video using Exotel’s APIs. They use this automated call to ask the driver if they’ve understood the material. If the driver hits no, then someone from the driver support team calls them up. This frees up a massive number of man hours that would’ve otherwise been wasted in manual calling.

4. Do you see a surge of innovation in telephony applications due to this platform?
Since Exotel is an enabler to companies in the startup ecosystem, we’re seeing a lot of innovation across verticals. For example, IVR is a technology that has existed for ages now. But today, Nielsen uses Exotel to do surveys using IVR, Babajob uses Exotel to screen candidates for blue collar jobs, a betel leaf seller uses Exotel to ensure that the grocery stores he supplies to don’t run out of stock. The spectrum of usage is another testimony to the power of the platform as well.

5. Can you name some companies in India who are using this telephony platform to build applications?
SquadRun is a crowdsourcing platform which connects various businesses with a mobile-first workforce. SquadRun introduced new genres of challenges to keep their players engaged. One of the experiments led to SquadVoice. Their aim was to help businesses launch their outbound call-based tasks in under minutes, using SquadRun as call agents. Callers are heavily qualified and curated for live tasks based on their skills. And SquadVoice is powered by Exotel completely.

6. In an era of IoT, how can telephony developers take advantage of this platform?
For developers, cloud telephony is the best way to innovate constantly with IoT. It is also the best way for them to give the customers the best user experience. Now, with a simple phone call or SMS, you can interact with your devices. For example, every one of us struggle to remember if we’ve switched off all the lights when we leave our home. What if you can do this with a simple phone call or SMS?

With cloud telephony, IoT can lend “smartness” to not just devices but also to the conversation with these devices because these calls and SMS can now be tracked and made more efficient. You can reduce the number of touch points required to make something work. One of our customers, built an app for Honda that makes an automated call to a nearby hospital and the person listed as an emergency contact in the event of an accident.