Wavecell raises US$8.15mil in Series B funding round

By Digital News Asia June 8, 2017

The round was led by Qualgro and MDI Ventures
Company will accelerate its go-to-market strategy for messaging and live-video solutions

Wavecell raises US$8.15mil in Series B funding round

WAVECELL, a Singapore-based cloud communications platform, announced that it has secured US$8.15 million (S$11.3 million) in a Series B funding round.

The round was led by Qualgro, a venture capital firm in Southeast Asia, and MDI Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Telkom Indonesia. Previous investors Wavemaker Partners and other new investors also joined this round.

The funding comes as the company is experiencing growth since its Series A funding earlier in December 2015, also led by Qualgro. In the past year, Wavecell has increased its enterprise customer base, by over 300%.

The new capital will be used to strengthen the company’s presence in Asia Pacific to better serve the enterprise space and reinforce the company’s relations with both local and global mobile carriers.

“This is a very exciting time for all of us at Wavecell. As we continue to serve our customers, along with product excellence, delivered with constant innovation and passion, we are now ready to continue scaling up our sales and marketing activities as well as growing our engineering team.

“Recognising Indonesia as one of our key markets, Wavecell will also work together with the Telkom Group of companies to develop synergies and collaborations with various business units,” Wavecell CEO and co-founder Olivier Gerhardt says.

Apart from further developing Wavecell’s product and technology, the CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) company will accelerate its go-to-market strategy for both messaging and live-video solutions.

“Having backed Wavecell from day one, we are thrilled with their progress in bringing to market a reliable and cost-effective cloud communications platform. With this latest round of funding in place, Wavecell is well-positioned to further expand its leadership position and become one of the most trusted service providers to banks, insurance, e-commerce and other corporate clients in the region,” says Qualgro founder and managing partner Heang Chhor.

MDI Ventures CEO and investment director Nicko Widjaja says, “We are excited to welcome Wavecell as part of MDI Ventures Portfolio. They have uniquely positioned the company as the first cloud communications API in APAC, and leading in the region amongst the likes of Twilio and Nexmo.

“Wavecell has redefined telecom by adding a digital layer to communication, although not entirely replacing the existing value chain. It’s transforming telecom, not replacing the existing analogue products and services.”

“With millions of customers in Asean like Grab, Lazada, Redmart, and tons of wholesalers and app developers, the best thing about Wavecell is that you don’t even know if you’re already using their technologies. In addition, we are happy to announce that Wavecell has already been working with Telkomsel and is creating great synergy value to the Telkom Group” he adds.

Founded in 2010, Wavecell, a Singapore-based company empowers enterprises and application developers to communicate efficiently and enhance customer experience via its messaging and live-video interaction solutions, which can easily be integrated to existing website, applications and services.