March 11, 2019 – Italy | Il Giorno – Luca Balzarotti

Made in Italy messaging services for banks and enterprises land to New York Stock Exchange.

Kaleyra group ended an operation of business combination with the America GigCapital, a private equity entity, already listed, specialized in technology, media and telecommunication fields.

“New York is the best choice for a company like ours that develops platforms for mobile communication for customer and enterprise. Of course, the only possible one” – points out Dario Calogero, CEO of this “new” company – because “there’s nothing worse for those who wants to be listed, of not having competitors to be compared with”, explains the manager that 20 years ago (1999) founded in Milan, Ubiquity, the first step for the birth of Kaleyra.

TODAY, the group manages, through a platform developed in Italy, integrated and multichannel communication services: messages, push notifications, instant messaging, voice services and chatbot, a service to support users that can find answers to their questions thanks to artificial intelligence algorithm, simulating a real dialog.

In Italy, better in “Europe” – points out Calogero – the CPaaS market (Communication Platform as a Service) – that enables communication services throughout cloud-based platforms – still has to take off. So, for the pioneers of this industry, the only way is: New York.

The entrance into the stock market will be completed in the second half of the year: last step of a growth started in Italy and completed abroad. Kaleyra is today a rare example of Made in Italy tech company grow up abroad: the arrival in Switzerland in 2016 and the acquisition of Solutions Infini with headquarter in Bangalore, the Indian Silicon Valley, have been the first steps for expansion “that in the last 5 years has had an important acceleration”, underlines Calogero. In 2018 – the year of the acquisition of Hook Mobile, another company of this industry – the group reached a turnover of 99,5 million dollars (about 97 million euros) and can count on a team of over 230 people in 13 offices across Europe, Asia, Middle East and North America.

Kaleyra aimed at banks – “that represent 55% of the revenue”, points out Calogero – and companies of all sizes and industries from about 200 countries all over the World (3.000 customers).

“In Italy – points out the CEO – the e-Money is not so used compared with other realities, like Sweden for example, that are preparing to completely remove cash for payments. But if we talk about banking services like home banking, chatbot, contact center, it is one of the most innovative Country”.

On the offering side, the latest news of Kaleyra, presented during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, is Hexa, a cloud, integrated platform of sms and voice services for SME and startups to “make available to entrepreneurs an innovative and at the same time easy-to-use communication technology“.

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