Cloud telephony has been steadily growing in India over the past few years, with increasing demand for cost-effective and efficient communication solutions among businesses. 

The market is expected to continue growing in the coming years due to the country’s large and diverse business landscape, and the need for remote and flexible communication tools.

Founded in 2018, CloudConnect became the first company in India to get a licence from the Department of Telecommunication (DOT) to operate as a Business to Business Virtual Network Operator (VNO).

“While large organisations were migrating to the cloud, there wasn’t any concrete focus on SMEs. We noticed that if somebody comes into the picture and can cater to the requirements of these small businesses where they only want to focus on their core business rather than focusing on communications and other services which are there, it could really make a difference,” Vidhu Nautiyal, Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer, CloudConnect, told AIM.

The company gives access to SMEs to enterprise communication systems such as Private Branch Exchange (PBX) on Mobile, IP Phone Solutions, Unified Communications, and Customised Business Communication Solutions.

It’s India’s first fully mobile advanced enterprise communication and collaboration systems, which is hosted on the cloud and can be accessed through a user-friendly app on individual smartphones.

The company has no direct competitors either, according to Nautiyal. “We don’t have any direct competitors. Which means apart from telcos like Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Jio, I would say, there is no other player which is providing pure Unified Communication Services in India apart from us.”

Impressive growth

Being the first licensed VNO gave CloudConnect a significant advantage. In the financial year 21-22, the company managed to grow around 400% in terms of revenue. In 2022 alone, it grew at an impressive rate of 261%.

So far, CloudConnect has onboarded clients such as Shipyaari, Univo, Real11, My Real Estate, Apollo Pharmacy, AHFL, ICICI Prudential.

For Shipyaari, one of their biggest challenges was connecting their field force with their customers and office. To solve this challenge, they integrated CloudConnect’s voice API into their application which helped bring the entire organisation’s communication channels onto one platform, resulting in improved delivery times and streamlined communication.

Similarly, by integrating CloudConnect’s API in their CRM, Amity University has managed to increase their reach to customers by 40%. Further, the company has also helped Felix Hospital, which is based in Noida, set up the backend system to manage the COVID helpline in real-time, ensuring that no calls were missed. 

Currently, CloudConnect is providing its products and services to customers in Tier 1 cities only; however, they are soon planning to be available across the country.

Besides, in the three years since its inception, the startup has on-boarded around 350 customers. Nautiyal revealed that the company is growing at a rate of almost 100% when it comes to customer acquisitions.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg. We are surely going to be growing more because as we speak, we are getting a lot of queries,” Nautiyal said.

Strategic partners 

CloudConnect has their own private data centre. “We do have a private hosting which is available in Asia’s largest tier four data centre, and we do have our hosting in multiple places like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.”

The company is also in strategic partnership with CRM providers such as Zoho, Freshdesk and Salesforce. “At the end of the day, these are the people who are providing the CRM solutions. What we do is we integrate our telephony into their system and then they go ahead and take it to the market,” Nautiyal said.

Currently, the company is gearing up to launch a voice sentiment analysis engine for the very first time in India. Built with collaboration with IIT Delhi, the new tool will analyse the tone and sentiment of a caller to a customer service agent in real-time using natural language processing (NLP).

“This information will then be displayed on the agent’s screen, allowing them to adjust their approach accordingly. If the sentiment is negative, the call will be escalated to a supervisor who can intervene and address the issue,” Nautiyal said.

AI and Analytics Play

CloudConnect extensively uses AI, ML and Analytics. “We provide dashboards where very extensively we use the AI and analytics,” Nautiyal said. The dashboard has around 50 different widgets which run data in real-time using AI. 

However, when it comes to generative AI, the case is a bit different. With the launch of Generative AI models like GPT-3, GPT-4, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion etc, enterprises are increasingly looking to leverage these technologies for different purposes. However, he also said the company currently has not found a use case for generative AI.

“Nonetheless, if we find a use case, then we would be more than happy to integrate it,” Nautiyal concluded.