2016 Year in Review: 100+ Team Members and 3 Years Profitable

2016 was a turning point for Plivo. As we push the envelope in revolutionizing telecommunications, we’re also bringing in new technologies to scale our software infrastructure and build the best customer experience. Our focus for 2016 was to take what we do best and make it the best in the industry. I’m happy to say that it’s paying off.

2016 Year in Review Stats

• Both Gartner and IDC have recognized Plivo as one of the top three vendors in CPaaS space.
• Delivered 2 billion voice minutes and SMS messages combined.
• Increased revenue by 200% to well into double digit millions.
• Increased customer base by 180%.
• Increased voice traffic by 150% and SMS traffic by 200%.
• 2016 marks the third year we’ve been profitable, even with heavy investments and team growth.
• Surpassed 100 team members.
• Increased engineering team by 400%, marketing team by 300%, and sales team by 300%.
• Moved into a new 20,000 square feet office in Bangalore, India. Take a photo tour and read the full details on our New Year, New Office blog post.
• Launched Zentrunk SIP trunking beta in all countries and toll-free SMS messaging in the United States.
• Launched Voice Infrastructure 2.0 to improve voice quality in all regions.
• Added 15 local in-country carriers and added two new data centers: Northern California and São Paulo.

What to expect in 2017

• More investment in infrastructure improvements for voice and SMS.
• Connections to more local in-country carriers to improve quality for all products: SMS API, Voice API, and Zentrunk SIP trunking.
• More investment in marketing and sales teams, to build a larger presence in the market and make a splash about the quality and transparency we bring to the industry.
• More investment in customer success teams to better support existing customers and streamline new customer onboarding.

All the details

Compared to 2015, we experienced 200% growth in SMS traffic and 150% growth in voice traffic. We delivered more than 2 billion SMS messages and voice minutes combined in 2016. To put this in context, the volume of SMS messages and voice minutes we currently deliver in a week is the same as what we delivered in a month in early 2015. With such significant increases in volume, we took a step back to focus on quality, and the market has noticed. Both Gartner and IDC have recognized Plivo as one of the top three vendors in CPaaS space.

As a company, we decided early on that we won’t compromise on quality. That’s why in 2016, even in the middle of significant growth, we dedicated six months of time and resources to improving our voice quality and positioning our infrastructure for long-term scalability. The result was our Voice Infrastructure 2.0, which features significant improvements to our voice backbone, including new data center locations in South America (Brazil) and US-West (Northern California), improvements in our global network and voice routing algorithm, optimized global routing, optimized intra-region connectivity, and less than 20ms connectivity to carrier peering hubs.

The underlying network of carriers is another big quality-of-service factor that Plivo brings to the table. In 2016, we built a dedicated team to focus on critical carrier relationships, and added 15 new direct connections to local in-country carriers in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Singapore, Japan, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Sweden, Mexico, India, South Africa, UAE, and Spain. With these direction connections, we’ve seen significant improvements in call quality and SMS delivery rates. Going forward, we’ll continue to increase direct connections to local in-country carriers, increase carrier redundancy, and ultimately increase voice quality and SMS delivery in all regions.

All of these quality improvements impact every Plivo product, which means that any new product or feature we release on our platform gains the same high quality of service. Last year, with the release of Zentrunk SIP trunking for all coverage areas, as well as toll-free SMS in the US, we’ve seen quality improvements that led to rapid growth and adoption from new and existing customers. We plan to make more updates to our infrastructure in the next few months to raise the bar on call quality and SMS delivery.

We take a lot of pride in the amazing team that’s helped us get to this point. Naturally as our business grows, our team grows too. We broke the 100 team member milestone this year. Engineering is core to our business, and that team grew by 400% last year. Our sales and marketing teams grew by 300%, and that has been pivotal in our revenue growth. To accommodate this growth, we moved our Bangalore, India, office to a brand new 20,000-square-foot space with a cafeteria, hot desk spaces, lounge areas, large meeting rooms, collaboration rooms, and a games room.

This year marks the third year we’ve been profitable, and our profitability continues to grow even with our aggressive team growth, new office, infrastructure investment, and increases in our marketing budget. We couldn’t have achieved these milestones without our customer base, which grew 180% in 2016. This of course has a direct impact on our annual revenue, which increased by 200% and is leading us well into double-digit millions.

What we’ve learned, and what you can expect in 2017

Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to move forward, and this year we did just that. This year we took a step back from releasing multiple new features and products. Instead, we focused on quality and dedicated a lot of resources and time to improving our infrastructure and carrier connectivity — and it’s already paying off. Our voice quality has improved with faster connectivity, fewer dropped packets, less jitter, and less crosstalk, and our customers have noticed the difference, especially during international voice calls. In 2017, you can expect to see us investing more in our infrastructure and signing on more local in-country carriers to improve quality for all of our products. And we’ll continue to invest in our marketing and sales teams to build a larger presence in the market and make a splash about the quality and transparency we bring to the industry.

Thank you for joining us on this journey to disrupt the telecommunications industry. We plan to bring you many more improvements, features, products, and services that add value to your experience.

If you have any feedback or feature requests, please contact our support team.

Cheers,

The Plivo Team