Cloud telephony firm Exotel has acqui-hired the core team of voice AI startup Dubverse, including cofounders Anuja Dhawan and Varshul Gupta, as it strengthens its capabilities in conversational AI, voice intelligence, and enterprise customer experience solutions.
As part of the strategic move, Dhawan will lead Exotel’s Conversation Quality Analytics (CQA) solution, while Gupta will head the company’s AI division, according to founder Shivakumar Ganesan. Meanwhile, Dubverse will continue to operate as an independent platform. The startup, backed by Kalaari Capital, had raised $800,000 in June 2022.
Notably, Exotel—supported by investors such as A91 Partners, Blume Ventures, and CX Partners—serves over 7,000 enterprises, including Apollo 24/7, Shiprocket, HDFC Securities, Truecaller, and MG Motor. Furthermore, the platform handles more than 20 billion interactions annually across sectors such as financial services, healthcare, and e-commerce.
This acqui-hire aligns with Exotel’s broader transition into an AI-first customer engagement platform. Consequently, the company is ramping up investments in voice AI, automation, and conversation intelligence. In total, it has onboarded five to six senior hires from Dubverse to accelerate this transformation.
“Customers started asking us to derive insights from call recordings, train models on their own data, and improve performance for their use cases. We needed a team that had experience with GPUs, training, and fine-tuning models. That’s the context in which we brought in the Dubverse team,” Ganesan said.
Founded in 2021, Dubverse has developed multilingual voice AI systems, including text-to-speech and speech synthesis technologies. As a result, the platform has served over 3 million users across more than 70 languages.
At the same time, Exotel continues to operate predominantly in the business-to-customer (B2C) segment. Shivakumar Ganesan stated that AI could automate nearly 60% of customer experience operations. However, he added that companies may reduce the total number of human agents by around 60%, while transitioning the remaining workforce from on-premise setups to cloud-based systems.
“Exotel is one of the few Contact Centre-as-a-Service (CCaaS) players offering the full stack—software, network, and infrastructure. So we are actually seeing growth in contact centre seats as well, even as automation increases,” Ganesan explained.
Financially, Exotel reported operating revenue of Rs 490.5 crore in FY25, up from Rs 444 crore in the previous year, reflecting steady growth.
Geographically, around 80% of Exotel’s revenue currently comes from India. However, the company is witnessing faster growth in international markets, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. That said, geopolitical uncertainties in the Middle East could impact approximately 10% of its growth projections.
“The situation in the Middle East is expected to impact about 10% of our growth plans. One large deal has already been delayed, with customers preferring to hold off on new decisions for now,” Ganesan said.
Looking ahead, Exotel is actively exploring expansion into newer markets such as Japan, Latin America, and Australia. Additionally, the company has a track record of strategic acquisitions, including Ameyo and Cogno AI in 2021 and Croak.it in 2015.
Exotel’s acqui-hire of the Dubverse team marks a significant step in its AI-driven transformation strategy. By strengthening its voice AI and conversational intelligence stack, the company is positioning itself to lead the next phase of customer engagement innovation while expanding its global footprint.
