Proximus has expanded its CPaaS portfolio by acquiring Indian vendor Route Mobile.
Proximus has signed a definitive agreement for a majority stake worth 58 percent in CPaaS specialist Route Mobile. In turn, several of Route Mobile’s founding shareholders will reinvest in a minority stake in Proximus Opal, a Proximus Group subsidiary and the holding company of Telesign, Proximus’ US-based affiliate.
Building on the cumulative strengths of Route Mobile and Telesign, Proximus Group is building on its foundations to become a leading CPaaS vendor.
Guillaume Boutin, CEO of the Proximus Group, commented:
The acquisition of a majority stake in Route Mobile is a transformational step for our international CPaaS and digital identity activities. With Route Mobile and Telesign, Proximus Group now holds two strong and highly complementary global assets, both from geography and product expertise standpoints. This will allow us to reap the benefits of scale, reinforce the product suite of both brands and realize synergies generating substantial value for our shareholders.”
Proximus’s Route Mobile acquisition produces substantial scale in the CPaaS space, with annual revenues of around €900 million for Route Mobile and Telesign combined.
“This acquisition perfectly fits in our bold2025 strategy, with a focus on strengthening our leadership in the domestic market and continuing to grow our international activities,” Boutin added.
Route Mobile compelled Proximus because of its position as a strong CPaaS market leader for emerging markets. The business provides omnichannel communication solutions to its customers, encompassing automated SMS or WhatsApp notifications for order updates, appointment reminders and promotions, and voice-based and email solutions. Route Mobile also produces AI-based firewall analytics offerings to mobile network operators worldwide.
The transaction empowers Proximus Group to become the third largest CPaaS player globally (based on messaging volume according to investor reports) with a significantly expanded customer outreach. Proximus’ CPaaS portfolio will be extended by adding Route Mobile capabilities, especially in omnichannel, which will help build value from the ongoing, generative AI-based innovations in customer experience.
“The partnership with Telesign paves the way for Route Mobile to become one of the global CPaaS leaders and achieve a billion-dollar annual revenue run-rate much sooner than the anticipated 3-4 years’ timeframe,” Rajdip Gupta, CEO of Route Mobile, said.
Route Mobile’s footprint in the Indian subcontinent, Latin America, Africa, and Asia-Pacific harmonises with Telesign’s presence in Europe and North America. This enables Proximus Group to establish a global customer coverage of over 200 countries and territories while ensuring exposure to high-growth markets.
“Route Mobile, with its strong CPaaS omnichannel product offerings and deep entrenchment in emerging markets coupled with Telesign’s strong presence in developed markets and a very robust digital identity stack, complement each other immensely to create a very strong value proposition for the Proximus Group and its stakeholders.”
The acquisition is expected to create substantial value because of the dynamic corporate culture and the complementary products, geographic coverage and strategy of Route Mobile and Telesign.
CPaaS and AI
As Proximus acknowledges in its announcement about the Route Mobile acquisition, there is an exciting AI-based revolution in customer experience and engagement.
Just last week, SignalWire launched what the company described as the “first and only no-code” AI agent for CPaaS.
SignalWire AI Agent’s ambition was to allow the embedding of intelligent conversational agents into a customer’s existing infrastructure with minimal coding being required, making it more intuitive and easy to use. The solution from the cloud-native UC infrastructure vendor means IT staff and non-developer employees can use plain text as input instead of coding.
The SignalWire AI Agent includes the SignalWire AI Gateway feature. This enables the virtual agent to retrieve or post information to custom middleware and transfer calls, sending SMS and all the other CPaaS APIs available at SignalWire. The solution produces myriad integration possibilities.
