Telstra Ventures Invests in API Specialist Cloopen

SYDNEY -- Telstra Ventures today announced a strategic investment in Beijing-based Cloopen, a leading provider of Chinese communications application programming interfaces (APIs) that enables developers to easily integrate messaging functions, video and voice calls in their applications.

Matthew Koertge, Managing Director Telstra Ventures, said the investment has been driven by the strong growth in the APIs and over-the-top (OTT) application sector in China.

“With the complex nature of the telecommunications infrastructure in China and different local policies and business practices in each province, Cloopen meets the need among application developers for simplified communications capabilities,” said Mr Koertge.

“As a platform as a service provider (PaaS), Cloopen can easily integrate a set of communications APIs into applications that provide services such as car-hailing or meal delivery, which are booming in China, to enable functions like application-to-people voice and messaging, two factor verification, and video conferencing. It can ease the complexity for application developers to work with multiple telecom operators to equip applications with these communications capabilities,” said Mr Koertge.

“Cloopen is the only internet-based cloud communication PaaS provider with this breadth of communications capabilities in China. Currently, more than 150,000 registered developers, including Tencent and Alibaba, are using the platform to build their applications,” said Mr Koertge.

The investment increases Telstra’s exposure to the rapidly growing OTT market in China and gives Cloopenaccess to Telstra’s large customer base in the Asia-Pacific. It also creates opportunities for collaboration with the Telstra Software Group.

Telstra Corp. Ltd. (ASX: TLS; NZK: TLS)