The Serial Entrepreneur's Playbook: Murthy Chintalapati's Journey Building Ozonetel, India's Cloud Communications Pioneer
An in-depth profile of Murthy Chintalapati, the serial entrepreneur who built Ozonetel, India's first cloud CX platform, from a successful exit.
In the world of technology, there are founders who build a company, and then there are serial entrepreneurs who see a world of problems to solve and build ventures to tackle them. Murthy Chintalapati belongs firmly in the latter category. From a successful Silicon Valley exit to pioneering the entire cloud communications category in India with his company Ozonetel, his journey is a masterclass in identifying industry pain points and building robust, technology-first solutions.
This dossier explores the journey of Murthy Chintalapati and the rise of Ozonetel, a company that started by solving a core problem for Indian SMEs and is now competing with global giants on the world stage. We'll dive into his founding story, Ozonetel's key growth metrics, its funding journey, and the core philosophies that have driven its success, using unique insights from his recent conversation on the Founder Thesis podcast.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
The Founder's Journey 🚀 Murthy Chintalapati's Path to Ozonetel
Every successful venture is built on a foundation of experience. Murthy's journey began not with Ozonetel, but with a solid grounding in technology and a successful first act as an entrepreneur.
A Foundation in Deep Tech: Murthy's technical acumen was honed at one of India's premier institutions, earning a Master's in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Delhi in 1985. His early corporate career gave him a wide-ranging perspective, with stints at India's public-sector giant ECIL, followed by roles at global technology leaders like AT&T and NEC in the United States.
First Venture: The Intoto Story: In 1997, Murthy co-founded his first venture, Intoto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. The company specialized in developing security technologies, licensing its intellectual property to major OEMs like Motorola and Nortel. A key part of this journey was establishing Rocsys, an offshore development center in India, as early as 1998—a pioneering move that went beyond cost arbitrage to focus on strategic talent development.
This first chapter culminated in a successful exit when Intoto was acquired by Freescale Semiconductor in 2008, marking Murthy as a serial entrepreneur with a proven track record of building and scaling a global technology company.
The Ozonetel Thesis 💡 Solving a Billion-Dollar Problem
With a successful exit under his belt, Murthy turned his attention to a new, pressing problem he observed back home in India. This was the spark that led to the founding of Ozonetel in 2007.
In a conversation on the Founder Thesis podcast, Murthy explained the gap he and his co-founder, Atul Sharma, identified. The Indian market was dominated by complex, on-premise call center hardware from companies like Avaya. For a growing Small or Medium Enterprise (SME), the cost was prohibitive.
“In the Indian market, the SMEs and all these guys cannot afford call centers. And not only the CapEx, but even the system integration expenses which you need to incur to put the solution together.”
The problem was clear: if a business had multiple sales offices or service centers, the management had no way to centrally track calls, monitor performance, or gain insights into customer conversations. They were losing business and didn't even know it. Ozonetel was conceived with a clear mission: to democratize advanced business communications by moving them to the cloud, making them accessible, affordable, and scalable for all.
Building from Zero to One 🛠️ The "KooKoo" Era & Finding Product-Market Fit
Ozonetel didn't just resell technology; they built it from the ground up, a philosophy that would become a key competitive advantage.
“What we believe is whatever you want to do, you need to have total control. So when a support issue comes up, you should be able to fix it quickly. You can't depend on the imported card and depend on a vendor to fix all the issues. So we went ahead and build the entire system.”
The company's initial product, launched in 2010, was an API platform called KooKoo. The thesis, similar to Twilio's in the US, was that developers would use their APIs to build their own communication apps. Early adopters included startups like Zomato, who used the platform to track calls to restaurants, and ZipDial, which launched its famous missed-call marketing service on KooKoo.
However, Murthy and his team quickly realized the Indian developer ecosystem was not yet mature enough for a purely API-driven model. The real need was for an out-of-the-box solution. This led to a crucial pivot: building a full, browser-based contact center application on top of their KooKoo platform, which became Ozonetel’s flagship product, CloudAgent.
Scaling Up 📈 Growth, Funding, and Key Metrics
Ozonetel's journey has been one of steady, product-led growth, accelerated by strategic funding and market shifts. Today, the company operates at a significant scale:
Current Revenue: Ozonetel is currently at an impressive $12 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).
Ambitious Goal: The company has a stated goal of reaching $100 million in ARR in the coming years.
Global Reach: The platform is trusted by over 3,500 global brands and used by more than 80,000 agents worldwide, with a presence in over 150 countries.
COVID-19 Accelerator: The pandemic was a major growth catalyst. Ozonetel reported a 100% increase in business growth in the 12 months leading up to October 2021 and helped enterprises transition 15,000 agents to a work-from-home model within two weeks.
Ozonetel's growth has been fueled by approximately $5.04 million in funding across four rounds:
Angel Round (2014): An undisclosed amount from Dinesh Agarwal.
Seed Round (2018): $36,000 from the Alchemist Accelerator.
Series A (2021): A significant $5 million round led by Stakeboat Capital, earmarked for US expansion.
Grant (2022): An undisclosed grant from ACT Grants.
Ozonetel's Product Moat 🏰 CCaaS, CPaaS, and the AI-Powered Future
Ozonetel competes in a crowded market through a powerful combination of a full-stack platform, deep AI integration, and a clear return on investment for its customers.
“Customer experience is the key for you to succeed any business. And Amazon has set the gold standard in customer experience.”
Its product ecosystem covers the three core pillars of business communication:
CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service): Its flagship CloudAgent software provides a complete, Al-powered cloud call center.
CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service): The underlying KooKoo platform allows businesses to embed communication features directly into their apps.
UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service): Through the strategic acquisition of CloudConnect Communications in 2024, Ozonetel now offers integrated internal employee communication tools like Cloud PBX.
The company's competitive edge is built on:
Owning the Full Stack: Having built their technology from the ground up gives them unparalleled control over innovation and quality.
Rapid Deployment: Ozonetel can migrate a legacy contact center to the cloud in as little as 24 hours, a process that takes competitors months.
Significant Cost Savings: Customers can reduce their total cost of ownership by up to 50%, primarily by avoiding hefty system integration expenses.
Deep AI Integration: The platform is engineered with AI at its core, offering Voice AI Agents, Agent Assist tools, AI-powered Quality Audits, and advanced Speech Analytics.
The Global Playbook 🌎 Cracking the US Market
While Ozonetel cemented its leadership in India, true scale required a global vision. In 2018, the company made the bold move to enter the highly competitive North American market.
“We are betting on North America to get there. And these are all pure SaaS revenues.”
Their "wedge" was not just being cheaper, but being fundamentally better and faster for the customer.
“Even to configure a simple IVR on a Avaya gateway, it takes a lot of effort. In our case... you don't need to be technical guy to configure our IVR. You could be a business guy.”
This strategy of offering a seamless, plug-and-play solution with powerful integrations was a game-changer. It has paid off, with North America now accounting for 30% of Ozonetel's revenue, with the remaining 70% coming from India and other regions.
The Founder's Philosophy 🧠 Lessons from a Serial Entrepreneur
Murthy Chintalapati’s success is driven by a clear set of principles that any aspiring founder can learn from.
On Passion & Value Creation: “I would say that if you have a bent of mind which says that 'I have to add some value to society' and you are passionate about it, then experience is immaterial... the only components that are required are the passion to make a successful product and the passion to bring value to customers.”
On Resilience: “There will be enough moments and situations where you will ask yourself, 'Am I going to pass this hurdle or will I collapse on the way?' You need your internal support system to let yourself and everyone around know that you are going to deal with this.”
On Taking the Plunge: “Go and try it out. I mean, don't hesitate. And, definitely, I mean, it's not easy, but you had to get used to it... you don't get success overnight, particularly if you're working out of India.”
On Staying Focused: “Focus on the customer and the product. That's it. Everything else is a noise around. If you wanna succeed, do that.”
Murthy's journey with Ozonetel is a powerful testament to what can be achieved with a clear vision, deep technological expertise, and an unwavering focus on solving real-world problems. From pioneering a category in India to building a global SaaS contender, his story is far from over.
Listen now!
Other ways to listen:
Your Feedback matters
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Whether it's about this episode or ideas you’ve been playing around with, shoot me an email at ad@thepodium.in. Your feedback keeps these conversations going, and I’m always up for chatting about your startup ideas too.
Until next time,
Your Host,
Akshay Datt