Bengaluru-based cloud telephony platform Exotel reported flat growth for the fiscal year ending March 2024. Despite stagnant revenue, the company significantly improved its financial health, narrowing losses by more than 60%. This improvement was driven by strategic cost-cutting measures, particularly in employee benefits and advertising expenses.
Exotel’s revenue from operations increased 5.7% to Rs 444 crore in FY24 from Rs 420 crore in FY23, its consolidated annual financial statements sourced from the Registrar of Companies show.
Exotel provides cloud-based voice and SMS contact center solutions, enabling businesses to manage customer engagement efficiently. Its primary revenue stream comes from offering internet-enabled cloud communication services. Exotel also makes money through software licensing, chatbot services, and sales of its products, including APIs, browser extensions, software development kits, and mobile applications.
Exotel has not provided the income bifurcation of above mentioned- services. However, 14% of its business came from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa in FY24. The company also added Rs 16 crore mainly from interest on deposits and investments, tallying the overall revenue to Rs 460 crore in FY24, compared to Rs 447 crore in FY23.
For the cloud-based voice and SMS contact center firm, the cost of telephone and postage formed 39% of its overall cost which increased 10.2% to Rs 195 crore in FY23. Exotel managed to keep its employee benefits in check, which saw a reduction of 24% in FY24 to Rs 186 crore, as compared to Rs 245 crore in FY23.
It’s worth noting that Exotel went through layoff during FY24, reducing its workforce by 15%.
Its decreased advertising, legal, payment gateway, traveling, information technology, and other overheads took the total expenditure to Rs 499 crore in FY24 from Rs 555 crore in FY23. See TheKredible for the detailed expense breakup.
Despite the modest growth in scale, the company managed to control its expenditures, resulting in its losses shrinking by 60.6% to Rs 43 crore in FY24 from Rs 109 crore in FY23.
Exotel’s expense-to-revenue ratio was recorded at Rs 1.12, with ROCE and EBITDA margins of -8.9% and -3.48%, respectively. According to the annual statements, its total current assets were registered at 379 crore, with cash and bank balances of Rs 206 crore as of March 2024.
The company has raised over $100 million so far including a $40 million Series D round led by Steadview Capital in 2022. According to the startup data intelligence platform TheKredible, A91 Partners is the largest external stakeholder with a 25.7% stake followed by Blume Ventures.
Exotel directly competes with Gupshup-owned Knowlarity, MyOperator, Ozonotel, and Tata Communications, and a few others.
