Tata Communications has acquired Kaleyra for $100m to empower global enterprises to offer personalised experiences to their customers.

Kaleyra was founded in Italy and has its headquarters in New York, It is an omnichannel integrated communication services provider with a set of proprietary platforms, offering targeted personalisation through messaging, video, push notifications, email and voice-based services, and chatbots.

“With this investment in Kaleyra, we will accelerate our push into the customer interactions platform market and fortify our global comm-tech position,” said AS Lakshminarayanan, CEO of Tata Communications. “We are excited about Kaleyra’s remarkable talent and their demonstrated capabilities in next-gen technologies. With this acquisition, we will further build intelligent, intuitive and innovative multi-channel communications to unlock new growth opportunities for our customers.”

Tata will gain an industry-proven platform with capabilities and scale. Kaleyra has a stronghold in the business communications market in banking and financial services, retail and digital commerce industries across the globe, in addition to a team with expertise in technology, engineering and research and development.

“When we launched Kaleyra 24 years ago with my co-founder Simone Fubini, I could hardly envision that our voyage would take us from a small Italian start-up, to global expansion, a publicly listed NYSE company, and now working together with a great technology leader like Tata Communications,” said Dario Calogero, CEO of Kaleyra. “This is great for Kaleyra and our shareholders, and our employees worldwide.”

Tata will also benefit from tier-one carrier connections in the USA, ready connectors to third party platforms, and video services without the need for additional software plugins.

The resulting business will leverage Tata’s base of enterprise customers worldwide including 300 of the Fortune 500 companies, mobile network operator (MNO) connections and global expansion opportunities. It will benefit from the global digital ecosystem enabler that powers the fast-growing digital economy in more than 190 countries and territories.

Tata has agreed to acquire Kaleyra in a cash only transaction, at a price per share of $7.25 for a total consideration to Kaleyra shareholders of approximately $100m and the assumption of all outstanding debt.

In 2022, Kaleyra reported revenues of $339.2m, an increase of 26.7% over 2021.

“As we further our position in the Industry 4.0 world, we are committed to offering heightened targeted communications for enterprises and their customers,” said Mysore Madhusudhan, executive vice president of Tata Communications. “We are confident our combined forces with Kaleyra will forge the path for the next wave of intelligence in enterprise communications globally.”

Avi Katz, chairman of Kaleyra, added: “It’s been a privilege to be part of the Kaleyra team since the onset of their public listing journey in late 2019, and through the follow up significant funding of the company and its meaningful strategic extensions through Gig Capital. This transaction represents a significant premium to the last closing share price and delivers significant value creation to all Kaleyra stakeholders. We are excited about the next chapter of the Kaleyra journey, being an essential part of the Tata Communications enterprise.”

Kaleyra provides mobile communication services to financial institutions, ecommerce players, OTTs, software companies, logistic enablers, healthcare providers, retailers and other large organisations worldwide. Through its proprietary platform and APIs, Kaleyra manages multi-channel integrated communication services, consisting of messaging, rich messaging and instant messaging, video, push notifications, email, voice services, and chatbots.

Kaleyra’s technology makes it possible to manage safely and securely billions of messages monthly with over 1600 operator connections in 190 countries, including all tier-one US carriers.

Lazard Frères is serving as Tata Communications’ financial advisor and Goodwin Procter is serving as Tata Communications’ legal counsel. Willkie Farr & Gallagher is serving as Kaleyra’s legal counsel.

The transaction has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies. The deal is subject to approval by Kaleyra’s stockholders, certain regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. Upon closing of the transaction, expected in six to nine months, Kaleyra will become a subsidiary of Tata Communications.