Cloud-based call center platform AloTech plans to launch an investment tour aimed at venture capital companies in America in line with its growth strategy in the North American market. The company, which aims to reach its current investment targets within 12 to 18 months, is considering starting negotiations for a new investment round and completing the round in two years, according to AloTech Founding Partner Cenk Soyak.
“We believe that we will be a technology unicorn coming out of Turkey. We are one of the rare technology companies with the potential to reach USD 1bn valuation in the eyes of investors. Our growth rate, market share and advanced technologies have a big impact on this,” says Soyak.
The company has been growing at around 90-100% every year for the last few years. It already achieved 100% growth in the first half compared to the same period of the previous year. “We have continued to be EBITDA positive for the last three years, even before the last investment we received, and devote all of our profits to human resources and growth,” Soyak notes. AloTech, which beefed up its management with five new assistant general managers recently, aims to increase the number of its employees from 110 to 150 by the end of the year.
Leading names of the industry such as Nevzat Aydin, Ata Uzunhasan and one of the Mediterra Capital partners Cenk Coskunturk have invested in AloTech so far. Lately in August, TechOne Ventures and angel investors Nevzat Aydin, Alp Saul, Galip Selcuk and Kerim Kotan participated in the USD 3mn Series A investment round, in which Collective Spark was the largest investor. The company plans to make use of the last investment it received to strengthen its position in global markets where it currently operates, especially in North America, and to reach new regions, according to Soyak.
SAW ‘CLOUDY’ FUTURE
Before AloTech was founded, Soyak was running a company that carried out tele-sales activities for telecommunication operators. “Data analysis was not possible in this unit, as the calls were made by mobile phone,” he recalls. While searching for call center programs Soyak’s path crossed with Idris Avci, who was preparing a prototype system that ran call center software in the cloud . “Seeing that the future of the call center industry is in the cloud, we decided to write our own software. We established AloTech in 2012 with a team of five people. With the inclusion of Korhan Ercin among the partners in 2019, we accelerated our structuring even more.”
AloTech provides all call center functions over the internet. Unlike traditional technologies, this eliminates investment costs such as hardware, servers, and business requirements such as maintenance, repair, licensing and upgrades, providing flexibility, cost advantages, and ease of use to call centers, according to Soyak.
Offering solutions to more than 600 customers through voice and written communication channels, AloTech bases its entire service portfolio on the ‘payas-you-go’ model. The company manages approximately 50-60 million minutes of traffic per month.
Exporting service to 27 countries
The call center software market is one of the fastest growing worldwide. Analysts predict that four out of every five call centers in the world will operate in the cloud by 2025. The market, which is growing by 25%, is expected to reach USD 90.6bn worldwide by 2028. With the goal since it was founded of exporting technology abroad, AloTech has been offering services in 27 countries, including the U.S., Romania and Nigeria, with the Call Center Studio brand it has invested in. It offers its services in Turkey internationally as well as developing customer-specific solutions.
Getting TUBITAK and KOSGEB support
AloTech, which has an R&D Center in Istanbul, is establishing an AloTech Artificial Intelligence Laboratory with a team of 10 people in Izmir with an aim to increase employment in this field and bring new capabilities to the sector. This team will work on artificial intelligence-driven decision support systems, facial recognition technologies, voice-to-text-textto-speech conversion, and mood analysis. AloTech Founding Partner Cenk Soyak, who said that they have reached the pilot stage of the video call technology they have been working on for a while, said: “We have 32TB of big data and we have ongoing data mining projects on this data. In this process, we are also supported by the Scientific and Technologic Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) and Small and Medium Enterprises Development Organization (KOSGEB). All these studies also attract the attention of investors.”