Wavecell raises $8m series B to connect companies to customers through text, video

The Wavecell team. Photo credit: Wavecell.

Singapore-based Wavecell announced today it has raised US$8.15 million in an oversubscribed series B round.

The round is led by Singapore-based venture capital fund Qualgro, which led Wavecell’s series A round last February. New investor MDI Ventures, which is the corporate venture capital arm of Telkom Indonesia, joined this round. Existing investors like Wavemaker Partners and other new investors also participated.

Wavecell develops digital telecommunications products that help companies reach their customers through messaging and live video chat. The startup creates APIs that allow its customers to integrate the tech on their websites, apps, and services.

Wavecell now has seven offices worldwide.

For example, its tech helps power Grab’s two-factor authentication through SMS, or Lazada’s text notifications that let you know your order has been received. It can also provide SMS campaigns, analytics capabilities, and technical support.

Co-founder and CEO Olivier Gerhardt tells Tech in Asia the company ramped up its sales and marketing efforts after its series A. This also meant its tech and engineering team had to keep up with increased demand.

Wavecell will use the fresh funding to strengthen its position in the region and establish collaboration with more local and international mobile carriers. It’s also looking to staff up across its various markets.

“Asia-Pacific alone holds so much untapped potential and we want to dive deep into the region,” Gerhardt says. “The funding will definitely help us to scale up and support enterprise sales efforts (e.g. recruitments), educate the market locally as much as we can (e.g. ramp up marketing initiatives), and strengthen global telecom carriers relations to build strategic partnerships.”

The company started out from Singapore, bootstrapping for five years before it raised external funding. Now it has seven offices worldwide, with an engineering team in Russia and Gerhardt claims the startup’s customer base has increased by 300 percent in 2016 and its revenue has grown at a rate of 250 percent for the same period. He doesn’t disclose specific figures.

“The strongest markets for us no doubt will be Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam,” he adds. “The business and consumer landscape there is driving at such high speed that we see a growing need of cloud communications solutions to provide better customer experiences in those areas.”

Filipino startup EngageSpark, which provides similar digital telecommunications services but with a focus on phone calls and text messages, raised an undisclosed amount of funding last week, in a round led by 500 Startups.

(Update, 8:45pm SGT: Updated with comments from Wavecell co-founder and CEO Olivier Gerhardt.)