Hosted VoIP Player RingCentral Cops $10 Million Funding Round

Scale Venture Partners led the $10 million round, but RingCentral also has Sequoia Capital, Khoshia Ventures, DAG Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank among its investors, as well as Cisco.

Founded in 2003 and based in San Mateo, Calif., RingCentral has about 200,000 customers worldwide, with a focus on the SMB segment. It sells subscription-based hosted VoIP systems with everything from fax functionality to smartphone integration. RingCentral's cloud-based PBX auto-provisions with Cisco and Polycom IP phones, and there's also a mobile platform, RingCentral Mobile, for extending the system to mobile devices.

"The days of on-premise PBX's and unwieldy phone equipment are over -- businesses need a cost effective and nimble phone system for today's mobile world," said RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis in a statement. "Over the past year, we have seen strong growth in adoption of our solutions from businesses in virtually every category, from mom-and-pop retailers to 200+ personal companies. We decided to raise additional capital to further drive our expansion efforts."

The company launched a formal reseller program in September 2010, and according to RingCentral executives, its partner community is about 30 percent telecom sales agents and 70 percent IT consultants, MSPs or VARs.

Bonnie Lam, director of channel sales for RingCentral, told CRN that RingCentral expects channel business to account for as much as 15 percent of RingCentral's overall revenue by the end of 2011.