Hailed a taxi using an app? Find out how this 4 year old start-up is powering safe rides Cloud telephony start-up Exotel claims that it powers over 50 per cent of all the taxi rides booked on aggregator apps across the country.

Bengaluru based Exotel, one of India's leading Cloud Telephony firm, has claimed that it powers over 50 per cent of all the taxi rides booked on aggregator apps across the country. Usage of taxi aggregator apps have been increasing exponentially due to the ease of use their customers have come to love.

Last week, Ola cabs, claimed that they do 7.5 lakh rides a day across the country. On the customer side of the conversations, Exotel primarily ensures the companies are able to build a seamless customer experience. One of the biggest advantages for customers when taxi aggregators use Exotel is that it enables drivers to call them without revealing their contact details and this protection of privacy adds to the security aspect of radio cabs.

Shivakumar Ganesan, CEO, Exotel, said, "Security is a major aspect of working with radio cabs and Exotel helps them protect the privacy of their customers." Customers are also constantly updated about the status of their ride and this informs them further of who their driver is, how long he's going to take and the driver's contact details, etc. Exotel also helps cab companies communicate better with their drivers. One of Exotel's clients uses Exotel to ensure that the training material that is pushed to the driver is fully understood by them.

They do this via automated IVR calls to collect the drivers' feedback. Based on this feedback, they move the conversation forward with the drivers. Shivku further commented that "As a country, we love to talk and Exotel is bang in the middle of this, empowering more people to have conversations that are productive & improve communication across various functions of a company." The company today has nearly 800 customers including Ola Cabs, Swiggy, Godrej, Expedia, Zoomcar etc.

Siddharth Ramesh, CTO, Exotel, added, "Our focus now is to build the most reliable cloud telephony system there is. We have been innovating constantly to continue to have the best uptimes in the industry. We power over 1 million calls and 1 million SMS-es every day. This number is growing every day and so is the efficiency of our infrastructure."

Exotel's long-term vision is to be the end to end voice solutions provider for businesses, irrespective of how the calls happen — mobiles, call centres, remote teams, etc. "Business communication is now on the move. A lot of client communication happens outside the 4 walls of a call center. And cloud telephony is built to bring order and efficiency to precisely this kind of communication" said Ishwar Sridharan, COO, Exotel. "The market for cloud telephony is so big in India that right now, we have not managed to even scratch the surface so far. Business models of companies are evolving and lending itself beautifully to tech integrations. This is also making cloud telephony increasingly relevant in India while solving the problem of discoverability at the same time" added Shivku.

Backed by Blume Ventures and Mumbai Angels, Exotel aims to expand their presence in more states in India in the next few months. They are also working on expanding to other markets in South Asia soon. "With new players in the industry and general awareness of the target segment growing, the future is very promising for cloud telephony in India. While initially all the players positioned it as a solution for SMEs, I can see adoption even in larger enterprises," said Shivku.