Cloud-based customer engagement platform Exotel has raised $35 million as part of its Series C funding from IIFL AMC, Sistema, CX Partners, and Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund.

Existing investors Blume Ventures and A91 Partners also participated in this round. Arun Sarin, former CEO of Vodafone, also joined the round as an angel investor, the company said in a statement.

The startup will use the fresh funds primarily to boost its product offerings. In January this year, the company had closed a $5.47 million Series B funding round from A91 Partners, Blume Ventures and others.

In June, Exotel and call centre software provider Ameyo announced their merger. As per the company, the combined entity will focus on building a full-stack customer engagement platform in the emerging markets to accelerate communication to the cloud and providing conversational AI capabilities for improved customer experience.

“We’re building the market's first cloud-based full-stack engagement suite by bringing in Ameyo’s contact centre capabilities on top of Exotel’s cloud communication infrastructure,” said Shivakumar Ganesan, CEO and Co-Founder of Exotel.

The company also claimed that it is currently growing 70 percent YoY and is at an ARR of $45 million. Founded in 2011, Exotel offers voice and SMS contact centre capabilities to help its clients manage their customer engagement over the cloud.

It counts Ola, Flipkart, GoJek, and HDFC Bank, among others, as its clients. As per the company, its services are used by more than 6,000 companies across India, USA, SE Asia, Middle East, Australia, and Africa.

Sumit Jain, Senior Partner, Sistema Asia Fund, said “CPaaS (communications platform-as-a-service) is a $6-billion market in India and SEA (South-East Asia) and one of the fastest-growing technology areas in the post-COVID world.

“Exotel has quietly emerged as the CPaaS platform of choice in India through their market-best reliability and comprehensive product suite,” Jain added.

The company claimed that it was looking to hit an annual revenue rate (ARR) of $200 million over the next five years and planning to increase its headcount by 200 over the next 12 months.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)