Bootstrapping An Innovative Telecom Services Startup: Callture Co-founders Mamoon Rashid and Siva Sanmuga (Part 6)

Sramana: You mentioned that you just received a patent for voice memos. How would that feature work as a selling point for businesses?

Mamoon Rashid: Let’s say that I call you on your toll-free number and you are a real estate agent or some type of contractor, job that requires you to be on the road. After I hang up you can just record a memo via that phone call that provides some of the details about that call. That memo is recorded and you can access it online. The next time I call you your memo will be played to you before you answer the call. It will remind you about the key details of our previous call.

Sramana: Does that mean you are maintaining some type of CRM?

Siva Sanmuga: It is like a one-man, mobile CRM solution.

Sramana: Is that CRM solution developed on top of something like Salesforce.com or is it your own contact manager?

Siva Sanmuga: It could be both. This information in the voice memo could be populated via SalesForce or it could be your previously recorded voice memo that we play back to you. If it is a voice memo then it is based on our technology.

Sramana: Is the CRM within the virtual PBX your primary differentiator?

Siva Sanmuga: It could be one of them. We will look to develop applications and patent them in order to maintain good differentiation. We also integrate with Skype which is something that Grasshopper and RingCentral do not have.

Mamoon Rashid: Over the past several years we have developed several APIs with the idea that we would be able to integrate our phone service with other services. These APIs help us and other cloud based services interact with each other.

Sramana: What are some other examples where it would make sense for a cloud based provider to integrate with you?

Siva Sanmuga: We have some marketing customers who provide tracking services. They track full clicks from Google as well as calls. We integrate in real time with their Google campaigns. They put different toll-free numbers in their campaigns. When they receive the call they use our API to integrate those tracking features into their overall marketing campaign tracking information.

Mamoon Rashid: There are a lot of CRM solutions out there that track email, websites but not the phone systems. Our service can easily be integrated into their services which allows you to track the entire conversation across email and voice.

Sramana: I really like that as a strategy to penetrate the market. Instead of playing an extremely expensive consumer marketing game you are going to market through other providers in related spaces and you clearly provide value through your API. That is very interesting for a bootstrapped company.

Siva Sanmuga: When we get clients directly we get more money out of them long term. Our primary objective is to get them online. Anybody who is looking for this service online is already convinced about the benefits of a virtual PBX. We don’t need to educate them, and they are more likely to recognize the additional benefits of our add on services.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Bootstrapping An Innovative Telecom Services Startup: Callture Co-founders Mamoon Rashid and Siva Sanmuga
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