Monday, 9 May 2016

Knowlarity Communications acquires Smartwards

Cloud telephony start-up Knowlarity Communications Pvt. Ltd has acquired Smartwards Services Pvt. Ltd, a Gurgaon based startup that helps small businesses with loyalty programs.
This is the second acquisition of Knowlarity, which employs about 450 people and has so far raised about $22.5 Million from investors Sequoia Capital and Mayfield Fund since it started in 2009. It earlier bought Unicom Techlabs Pvt. Ltd, another startup in the same space in January 2014, and claims to serve about 15,000 customers in 65 countries.

Knowlarity competitors in the cloud telephony space Exotel Techcom Pvt. Ltd and Ozonetel Systems Pvt. Ltd have also made acquisitions in the last couple of years. Last year, Exotel acquired Voyce, a platform that helps businesses collect customer feedback, as part of its efforts to strengthen its customer service offerings, and voice based social media startup Croak it.

In 2014, Ozonetel acquired the speech recognition business of Yantra Software, a provider of speech and voice technology products and services. Startups that cater to small businesses in India have garnered some investor interest over the last year, with Snapbizz Cloudtech Pvt. Ltd which devises technology for grocery stores, raising $7.2 Million in an investment round led by venture capital firms Jungle Ventures, Taurus Value Creation, Konly Venture and Blume Ventures.

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