The Tanla Journey: How This Indian Company Became a Leader in Cloud-based Communication Solutions

The need for contextual communications is one of the largest emerging trends in customer-facing communications. Cloud-based solutions such as CPaaS (Communications Platform as A Service) are leading the charge towards next-generation communications by allowing enterprises of any size to easily develop and embed communications features without needing to build backend infrastructure and interfaces.

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At the forefront of the global cloud-based communications market is, Tanla Platforms Limited. From humble beginnings in the mobile messaging sector to leading and innovating B2B communications worldwide, it has been an incredible journey.

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Tanla was founded in 1999 as a small mobile messaging company by Uday Reddy with a bunch of mobile messaging experts who set out to create a world-class messaging service.

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Today, Tanla is a global leader in the cloud communications space, processing over 800 billion interactions annually as a CPaaS provider and has pioneered several industry-first innovations and technologies to serve a diverse clientele worldwide.

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How We Got Here: Timelines, Major Milestones

Our two-decade journey through the cloud-communications space has been a remarkable adventure filled with incredible challenges and spectacular victories, all of which have shaped us into the Tanla of today. Here are some highlights.

• 1999: Tanla Solutions was founded
• 2001: First A2P SMSC implemented in India
• 2002: Implemented Optimum Routing Solution (ORS)
• 2003: SS7 Based Voice Mail Server implementation
• 2005: Acquired Techserv Tele Services, Smartnet Communication Systems and Mobizar Limited
• 2006: Follow on Public Offer (FPO)
• 2007: Listed in Stock Exchanges
• 2008: Acquired Finland-based company Openbit Oy
• 2009: Partnership with Nokia for License Management and M-Payment services
• 2010: Granted patent for Automated Meter Reading System, Launched Intune music scoring engine, Launched 3G video services with MTNL
• 2011: Launched first 3G mobile video telemedicine solution in India, Launched T-pay mobile
• 2012: Partnership with RIM for gift-card solution
• 2013: Launched Game On social gaming platform in partnership with EA
• 2014: Deployment of fast-track platform for A2P messaging with Vodafone India
• 2017: Launched Voice Connect Cloud Platform with Vodafone India
• 2018: Acquired Karix Mobile
• 2019: Launched World’s first blockchain-enabled commercial communication stack – Trubloq at MWC19,
          Crossed 13 billion messages mark on Domestic A2P Platform,
          Acquisition of Gamooga

• 2020: Launched DLT platform with 5 telcos in India,

                      Awarded contract to launch Trubloq with a leading telco in Dubai

• 2021: Partnered with Microsoft to launch blockchain-enabled CPaaS platform Wisely, Partnered with Truecaller to offer Business Caller ID solutions to enterprises,
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Gartner recognizes Tanla in the latest CPaaS market guide as a key global solution provider in the Developer market; the only Asian Company to be recognized under the Developer category,

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Tanla Platforms Limited recognized in Gartner’s “2021 Competitive Landscape - Communications Platform as a Service” based on a combination of prominence and the unique features of its Wisely offering,

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Tanla and VI sign partnership to deploy blockchain-enabled Wisely platform to manifold increase ROI for global enterprises,

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Touching a billion lives with swift SMS delivery of OTPs and vaccine certificates powered by Tanla’s messaging platform in conjunction with CoWin
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Financial Recognition

Some of our proudest moments were when we were included on two national exchanges – the NSE and the BSE, as well as prestigious indices such as the FTSE Russell Global Equity Index, Nifty 500, BSE 500, MSCI PWR and the newly launched Nifty India Digital Index.

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Key Acquisitions

As a market leader with an ever-expanding scope, Tanla has made multiple acquisitions to execute their growing vision, the major ones being:Karix Mobile Pvt. Ltd.
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1. Karix Mobile Pvt. Ltd.
   Karix is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tanla Platforms Limited. With over 21 years of industry experience across all major industries, Karix serves over 2000 enterprise customers in the BFSI, e-commerce, governance, retail, social media, automobile, and M&E sectors.
   Karix’s rich communication suite and advanced computational platform with AI and natural language processing is a great asset to the Tanla family. Karix has several cloud-based solutions for enterprise customer engagement including WhatsApp, SMS, email, voice, marketing automation, actionable messaging, chatbots and live agent chat.

2. Gamooga
   Gamooga is an AI-powered omni-channel marketing platform which allows enterprises to offer personalized experiences to users across several channels (push notifications, in-app notifications, web banners, email, SMS) using marketing automation and micro-segmentation.
   The platform is capable of dynamic segmentation, delivering dynamic recommendations and powerful user analytics to create comprehensive customer lifecycle campaigns in a visual interface without needing the help of large technology teams.
   The acquisition of Gamooga’s big data and AI-powered marketing stack open up new avenues for Tanla to offer a bespoke end-to-end customer experience suite.

What We Do:

Since the beginning, a strong pioneering spirit has been at the heart of our work. Tanla was the first company to develop and deploy A2P SMSC (Application-to-person SMS Center) in India.
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1. Tanla offers a broad and robust set of cloud-based solutions for enterprises. Trubloq
   Our unwavering commitment to minimizing spam, fraud, privacy breaches and any other kinds of Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC) led us to develop Trubloq – the world’s first blockchain enabled communications stack that combats UCC. It is the single-largest deployment of blockchain powered use case processing to the tune of 350 billion transactions per year!
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   Trubloq allows enterprises to maintain accountability in transactions by using machine-learning and AI to ensure data privacy, flag suspicious patterns, filter fraudulent behaviour and eliminate unregistered entities. For the end user, this means they can be less wary of receiving commercial communication since Trubloq ensures their privacy, consent, preferences, and complaints are managed efficiently.
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   Trubloq has become a key part of the regulatory ecosystem and has been developed to comply with TRAI regulations. A whopping 70% of India’s A2P SMS traffic is processed by Trubloq and it hit the incredible milestone of scrubbing 1.1 billion messages in a single day in 2021.
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2. Wisely
   Wisely, built in collaboration with Microsoft, is a cutting-edge, enterprise-grade CPaaS platform which delivers end-to-end secure experiences for customers, businesses, suppliers, and regulators using our unique combination of cryptography, blockchain, AI and Machine Learning.
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   For end users, Wisely’s edge-to-edge network and single source of truth offers several layers of security to shield them from having their sensitive information misused by unauthorized profiling, phishing, data breaches and man-in-the-middle exploits.
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   Wisely’s digital marketplace connects all of the stakeholders via secure express routes and Microsoft’s global network powered by Tanla’s patented cryptographic solutions. The blockchain guarantees maximum compliance to regulatory standards, complete transparency and zero dispute settlements.
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3. Messaging
   We have a robust suite of messaging products for enterprises and mobile operators.

• SMSC – Dedicated A2P SMSC service that allows telecom operators to manage A2P messaging
• SMS Firewall – Telecom-grade platform which diligently plugs network loopholes, mitigates fraud, and improves ROI
• SMS Hubbing – Tanla’s SMS Hub simplifies SMS interoperability, manages number portability, and allows real-time monitoring
• USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) Center – Key for providing many services on old and new GSM networks in a cost-efficient manner
• Push Notifications – Allows enterprises to create and manage multiple push notification campaigns through a single UI
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4. IOT
   Tanla’s IOT platform has been built from the ground up to provide the most complete set of IOT-specific development tools.
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   Our IOT platform allows you to connect assets, people, processes and systems through our global connectivity solution and flexible pricing model. Enterprises can seamlessly collect real-time data from assets and critical devices and manage them through our comprehensive analytics platform.
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5. Tanla Cloud Voice
   Tanla’s enterprise-class telephony system allows you to build and manage your entire cloud-telephony setup from a centralized web interface. Our low-latency routes and tier 1 carrier interconnects, supporting most major codecs.
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   We offer a flexible pricing structure, on-demand scalability, 24/7 support and excellent features like virtual numbers, programmable APIs, Click2Call widgets, hosted IVR, source trace and CRM integration
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6. Email
   Our email platform offers high availability and scalability to customers who want to dispatch high volume traffic. We offer several email solutions for critical business processes.

• OTP, Transactional Alerts and Business Critical Messaging for user verification, authentication requests or sending out critical updates
• Automated batch emails with attachment for managing invoices, statements, reports etc
• Promotional campaigns
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7. WhatsApp
   Our advanced platform, technical expertise, infrastructure and experience as a trusted WhatsApp Business Solution Provider allows us to offer several WhatsApp services to enterprises.

• Service workflow: Drive data-gathering conversational chatbots
• Integration API: Integrate your live systems to cater to customer needs
• Chat Interface: Provide always on, 24/7 customer support
• Knowledge repository: AI-powered conversations with customers
• BPA manager: Automate processes without deploying a single line of code
• NLP Manager: Support for free form conversations to interpret requests
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8. RCS
   Rich Communication Services (RCS) is a protocol created to replace SMS messages with a text message system with several app-like features – read receipts, engagement insights and sharing multimedia, locations etc.
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   Our RCS platform allows businesses to create memorable customer interactions with

• Rich Media: Share images, videos, maps, music
• Branded Communications: Showcase your brand presence with profile images, avatars, icons, rich media
• Actionable buttons: Provide clickable buttons to enable purchases and conversational options
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9. Chatbots
   Our Chatbot solutions are incredibly cost-efficient at providing customer service at scale. With our AI and Machine Learning powered platform, businesses can build complex solutions that handle most common support queries automatically without human intervention.
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10. Progressive Web Apps
    Enterprises find that engagement on apps is higher due to push notifications and other engagement features.
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    Our ACTON platform allows businesses to forge deeper connections with customers using rich and actionable notifications as follows.

• Notifications: Auto push or define schedules for in-app pop-ups, interstitial, banners and interactive push notifications that support rich media
• Actionable Buttons in messages: CTA buttons that can be adapted and customized with every notification and outcome
• Feedback and surveys: Create surveys for capturing customer responses at various touch points
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11. Marketing Automation
    Our AI-powered Omni Channel marketing automation platform offers powerful features to enterprises for connecting with their customers.

• Omni-channel engagement: Push notifications, in-app messaging, SMS, Email, web push notifications etc
• Dynamic Segmentation: Create dynamic segments based on user behaviour and deliver targeted campaigns
• Marketing automation: Automate all customer communications across all touchpoints
• Personalization at scale: Personalize marketing messages with user data such as name, location etc
• Powerful User Analytics: Real time actionable insights on your customer data
• Dynamic recommendations: Customized experiences with dynamic content and personalized offers
• Intuitive Journey Builder: Build comprehensive customer lifecycle campaigns on a DIY graphical interface
• Optimize Channel Performance: Leverage our predictive algorithms to trigger optimized communications for each channel

The Road Ahead

As we look back at how far we have come since 1999, we are humbled and honoured. We have exceeded many of our wildest expectations, and we are excited to continue breaking through our own records in the future.

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We will continue to expand our CPaaS footprint, blazing a trail with innovation and cutting-edge technology to offer enterprises across the globe the best-in-class commercial communication solutions.

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With Trubloq, Wisely, our enterprise platforms and the talent and dedication of all the wonderful people who work at Tanla and its subsidiaries, we are excited to usher in a new era of sustainable technological innovation.
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We’re only getting started.

Stay tuned.

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