How This Hyderabad-based Startup Is Leveraging AI And ML To Smoothen Customer Experience
Modern businesses face challenges in integrating multi-channel communications on a single platform, managing security concerns and providing seamless customer experiences. This is where Hyderabad-based Telebu enters. The Unified-communication-as-a-Service (UCaaS) company has built an AI-backed platform– Telebu 360, to streamline companies’ internal and external communications through audio and video conferencing, chatbots, virtual cloud office, text messaging and APIs. Prasanth Yerrapragada, VP of Technology and Telebu, said, “Today, enterprises exist because of the experiences they can provide. That is how they differentiate themselves from their competitors. AI technology allows an exceptionally humanised experience, one which the customers trust and wish to return. Hence, AI is expected to become a vital weapon to reach out to consumers and increase their level of engagement.” Humble beginnings Telebu, founded in 2003 by Satya Kalyan Teeramsetti and his seven-member team, started its life as SMSCountry Networks. Out of a tiny office in Ameerpet, in Hyderabad, SMSCountry pushed SMS as a marketing tool for Indian enterprises. The company scaled its business across 11 countries, growing the team to 1,500-plus employees operating across more than 40 cities. In 2012, SMSCountry relaunched as a Communication-as-a-Service company and rolled out a series of products such as grptalk, Press3, Join, Pop, Ping & Blocks. In June 2018, SMSCountry rebranded as Telebu. Telebu has offices in Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Delhi-NCR, Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait. Offerings grptalk: A cloud-based audio conferencing platform that connects from three to 10,000-plus participants in a single class, instantly. The product is mostly used to host town-halls, investor-relation calls, training sessions, and sending across voice broadcasts. TelebuJoin: Video conferencing and webinar platform. TelebuPing: A chat app to ensure safety and security of business assets, classified and proprietary information. It also doubles up as a support hub for customer queries. TelebuHub: A virtual cloud office solution with a built-in CRM. It allows enterprises to set up in-bound, out-bound, blended call centres in less than 30 minutes. Telebu Pop: An AI-based conversational marketing platform that helps businesses connect with their visitors, leads, and prospects in a human-like fashion. SMSCountry: Services of the 17-year old B2B company that helps enterprises build better relationships with their customers and employees using SMS, chat, voice and video products, APIs, and more. TelebuBlocks: An integrated API platform for developers to build their communication-ready solutions. With Blocks, Telebu offers chat, voice, messaging and video API solutions that help businesses build and scale faster. Tech Stack Telebu works on multiple tech stacks. It uses the following programming languages: Dot Net PhpPythonJava Additionally, Telebu uses Ruby on Rails and the SWIFT framework for its products and services. Its products grptalk and TelebuJoin works on PSTN and WebRTC architecture. Building foundation with AI and ML Telebu uses AI and ML for grptalk, TelebuJoin and TelebuHub. “We are experimenting with Voice Recognition, Voice Intelligence (to understand customer sentiment when a customer speaks to a support agent), and Text to Speech capabilities (to trigger transcriptions for meetings),” Prasanth said. With Voice Intelligence, Telebu plans to offer cues in real-time to support agents and set up fail-safes in the architecture to enhance its system security and boost privacy. Telebu’s tech function relies on JIRA and PowerBI to manage projects, timelines, and sprint cycles. “Our sales function depends on Lusha, Loom, TelebuHub, CRM, TelebuJoin, G-Suite and Deal Flow Management applications.Our marketing function depends on Hootsuite, SEMrush, Engagebay, MissingLettr, Grammarly, Awario and Oviond,” Prasanth added. Hiring practices Telebu has carved out a four-step strategy to fulfil its talent acquisition needs: Sourcing and shortlisting through job boards Assessment through skill-based test for mid-senior level openings Conducting three rounds of interviews to evaluate candidates based on their skills, competencies, people management attributes and cultural fit Pre-induction calls, training and orientation for onboarding Interestingly, all the interviews for recruitment take place on TelebuJoin. Road ahead Through team communication, collaboration and customer communication services, Telebu addresses multiple markets. “All the three combined, we cater to a market which will be valued at close to $150 billion by 2024, globally,” Prasanth said. Ever since the pandemic, Telebu’s target market segment has further expanded. It is now catering to the Work-from-Home segment, broadly a subset of the three segments, “But is driven by SMEs and MSMEs, instead of enterprises,” Prasanth said. With more than 10,000 active registered businesses with a run rate of 30 percent quarter-on-quarter, Telebu now plans to penetrate East African, South East Asian, South American, Australian, US, UK and Canadian markets. “We want to challenge industry leaders like RingCentral, 8 by 8, Microsoft, and Google, to become the preferred UCaaS solution providers amongst enterprises, SMEs, MSMEs and startups,” Prasanth said.
Telebu has built AI platform Telebu 360 to streamline communications through audio and video conferencing, chatbots, cloud office, and APIs.
Telebu has built AI platform Telebu 360 to streamline communications through audio and video conferencing, chatbots, cloud office, and APIs.
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["AI", "ML", "RAG", "chatbots", "Python", "R", "Go", "Rust", "Java", "API"]
After diving deep into the Indian startup ecosystem, Debolina is now a Technology Journalist. When not writing, she is found reading or playing with paint brushes and palette knives. She can be reached at debolina.biswas@analyticsindiamag.com