Telcentris Plans Global Expansion, Fueled by $5.3M from SBD Global

Telcentris, VoxOx

Telcentris, which provides voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services through its VoxOx technology platform, has raised $5.3 million from SBD Global Fund in what Telcentris describes as its first round of institutional funding. Telcentris said it plans to use the capital to expand its mobile strategy.

Users can download a VoxOx app onto their desktop or iPhone. The technology integrates calls, text messaging, and other types of communications into a single user interface. Telcentris derived the name for its VoxOx business from “voice over X,” meaning its cloud-based software can send a voice call over any number of networks to a user’s computer or phone. Like Google Voice, VoxOx provides users a free phone number and allows free calls to other VoxOx users.

The San Diego company, which operates as a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier, says it maintained a low profile last year as it expanded from its initial focus on the consumer market to its “VoxOx In Business” offerings.

Telcentris said a boutique investment banking advisory firm, Dallas, TX-based Pepperwood Partners, which is assisting the company in securing as much as $40 million in financing, helped arrange the deal with SBD Global Fund.

In its statement, Telcentris says SBD Global Fund was established in 2010 and is based in Limassol, Cyprus.  SBD Global Fund’s chief investment officer, Gregory Klumov, also is joining Telcentris’ board of directors. Klumov is a Russian Internet entrepreneur and investor who joined SBD Global in 2011 “to source and execute all acquisitions outside Russia.” In July, Klumov joined the board of Austin, TX-based Cinsay, a Web-based startup that uses its proprietary interactive video “Smart Store” technology to sell products and provide other e-commerce services.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.