SaaS startup CloudWave lands $2 million series A to expand globally

The oversubscribed $2m round was led by Moelis Investment Bank, supported by Singapore-based VC fund Vulpes Investment Management.

The cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startup helps contact centres deliver a better customer experience, and the sudden closure of international call centres caught many Australian businesses short, leaving customers stranded, frustrated and angry. It also exposed a major flaw in their communications strategy that industry veteran Michael Powrie, CloudWave’s co-founder and CEO set out to address.

He realised that most companies relied on traditional, phone-dominant call centres to help customers, despite a major shift to social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp as well as chat bot.

Powrie build CloudWave with the premise that cloud was integral to delivering the customer experience and a solution for the remote work era.

“I have always envisioned a world where consumers would one day enjoy interacting with a contact centre, and equally where agents within the contact centre had access to the tools they need to provide excellent service and be happier doing their day to day job,” he said.

“I’m pleased to say with CloudWave NEON, this dream has become a reality.”

To help him realise that reality, Powrie enlisted former Investible chief investment officer Hugh Bickerstaff as CloudWave’s co-founder and COO.

Bickerstaff said CloudWave appealed as his next challenge because of the efforts it put into building and maintaiingn strong relationships with employees, customers and technology partners.

“They have leveraged those relationships to deeply understand the issues their clients are facing and love using cutting edge technologies to develop highly innovative,” he said.

“CloudWave has a strong product suite that customers and contact centre staff love to use. I think it is this ability to get close to their customers, listen and understand their challenges and then develop innovative and delightful solutions that people love to use. This is highly differentiated from traditional providers in the contact centre management software space”.

Moelis Australia’s Growth Capital Fund MD Jaron Yuen, said CloudWave was an attractive investment because as founders Powrie and Bickerstaff bring decades of experience in delivering client-centric contact centre solutions, and a scaling tech businesses to their startup.

“They combine this experience with a leading cloud-native contact centre solution and an unparalleled focus on customer needs,” he said.

“The CloudWave cloud-based client communication product sits at the confluence of this broader transformation – it is an accessible and easily deployable solution across a broad size of customer.”