8×8, a provider of voice, video, chat and contact center solutions, announced the acquisition of Wavecell, a Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) provider, for $125 million in cash and stock.
Wavecell has more than 500 customers, including Paidy, Tokopedia and Lalamove. Wavecell has an R&D center in Asia for product innovation and delivery. Olivier Gerhardt is the CEO and co-founder of Wavecell.
The acquisition of the Singapore-based privately-held company provides a platform and high-growth revenue business to pursue CPaaS globally. The deal represents an expansion of 8×8’s cloud business from Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS), Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS), and Video into the CPaaS market.
Wavecell is expected to expand 8×8’s presence into Southeast Asian market, including Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Hong Kong.
IDC forecasts the worldwide voice and text messaging communications platform-as-a-service market to grow to $10.9 billion in 20221.
“The market opportunity in CPaaS is growing rapidly, and this acquisition enables us to quickly provide these services to our customers around the world,” said 8×8 CEO Vik Verma.
“With the acquisition of Wavecell, we can offer customers enterprise-class APIs, bringing a CPaaS solution to our global communications platform,” said Dejan Deklich, chief product officer of 8×8.
Wavecell will enable 8×8 customers in key verticals such as healthcare, financial services and retail will be able to quickly configure 8×8’s voice, video, messaging and analytics to meet their regulatory compliance requirements or build unique customer experiences across multiple channels.
The $125 million deal represents a multiple of less than 4x anticipated Wavecell calendar 2019 revenue. 8×8 will pay approximately $69 million in cash and approximately $56 million in 8×8 common stock.
