The Genesis: Facing Communication Friction in a Global Market
In an era when remote work, global teams, and digital-first companies are standard, traditional telephony systems—load-bearing hardware, inflexible, and tied to a physical location—have not kept pace with the needs of business. It was this friction that Dr. Rajendra Dangol and Dinesh Silwal witnessed.
Dangol, an electrical engineering and R&D professional, had a very good insight of technology platforms. Silwal’s background in IT, communications and growing startups, meanwhile, gave him firsthand exposure to how legacy voice systems stifled growth. The duo asked: What if businesses—regardless of size or location—could instantly have virtual phone numbers in 100+ countries, with integrated calls, texts, analytics, and CRM workflows, all on a simple cloud platform? That question sparked the founding of KrispCall in 2020.
The Founders & Their Roles
- Dr. Rajendra Dangol (Co-Founder & Co-CEO): With a Doctor of Science (Technology) in Illumination Engineering & Electrical Building Services from Aalto University, Finland, and extensive experience in research and engineering, Dangol leads the visionary, product- and technology-focused side of KrispCall.
- Dinesh Silwal (Co-Founder & Co-CEO): Holding an MSc in IT from Cardiff Metropolitan University and a BEng in Electrical, Electronics & Communications from Tribhuvan University, Silwal brings strong technology, startup, and product leadership. He drives operational execution, engineering, and go-to-market functions.
Together, they form a complementary pairing: Dangol’s research-led, systems-thinking approach and Silwal’s startup execution and product intuition. Their shared history and friendship (over 25 years of combined experience) underpin their company culture.
Building the Venture: From Idea to Platform
KrispCall was officially founded as KrispCall Pte. Ltd., headquartered in Singapore, in 2020.
Their mission: to “upgrade business telephony” — delivering a modern, intuitive phone system that integrates seamlessly into existing workflows and helps growing teams globally.
They quickly built an MVP in 2021 and launched the whole platform in 2022, choosing to base critical infrastructure on the cloud communications provider Twilio to scale rapidly.
Their product offers virtual toll-free, local, and mobile numbers across 100+ countries, supports text, calls, call recording, analytics, CRM integrations, and multi-location call centres — essentially delivering enterprise-grade telephony to startups and SMBs.
Growth & Milestones
KrispCall has posted impressive growth metrics:
- According to an article, over three years, the company achieved 3,000% revenue growth, served over 5,000 businesses in 150+ countries, and supported 6,000+ customer conversations per month.
- Their tech stack explicitly lists Twilio for communications infrastructure.
- Their company profile lists 101–150 employees and a founding date of 2020.
Product Philosophy & Differentiation
A key differentiator for KrispCall is its emphasis on accessibility and global reach. Many business phone systems restrict you by country or geography; KrispCall lets a company in, say, India or Nepal, have numbers in the U.S., UK, or other markets and operate them as if local.
Other differentiators:
- Deep CRM and workflow integrations so that telephony becomes part of selling and support, not a separate silo.
- A user-friendly interface and cloud-first architecture that avoids heavy infrastructure investment or complicated setup.
- Addressing remote and distributed teams: in a hybrid global work era, KrispCall offers flexibility that legacy systems can’t match.
- Their partner and affiliate ecosystem: for example, their affiliate programme offers 30 % lifetime commission, helping channel growth.
Challenges Faced & Strategic Lessons
Despite its success, KrispCall has navigated several strategic and execution challenges:
- Highly competitive space: Cloud telephony and VoIP have many players—from large telcos shifting to cloud, to pure-play SaaS vendors—making differentiation and market penetration hard.
- Global compliance & infrastructure: Serving numbers in 100+ countries requires navigating international telecom/regulatory regimes, number licensing, and data privacy — complex work that requires strong operations.
- Scaling operations and support: As the user base grew globally, support, quality of service, and uptime became critical. Monitoring and maintaining this at scale is non-trivial.
- Brand trust despite being newer: Many businesses are cautious about switching telecom platforms; KrispCall built credibility through aggressive customer growth, transparency, and channel partnerships.
- Maintaining message simplicity: With many features and integrations, the challenge is ensuring the product remains easy to deploy and understand, especially for startups without large IT teams.
The founders have emphasised a “build from pain-point” mindset: both Dangol and Silwal experienced frustrations with traditional telephony systems and used that empathy to drive product design. Dangol is quoted in the Twilio case study: “As entrepreneurs ourselves, we have experienced the pain points of traditional telephony systems.”
Why Their Story Matters
The KrispCall story is compelling for several reasons:
- Founders with domain depth: Having founders who are technically adept and who understand communications firsthand helps bring credibility and authenticity to the technical vision.
- Global/emerging markets story: While many unicorn telephony companies originate in the U.S., KrispCall illustrates how a Singapore-headquartered, globally ambitious startup founded by Nepalese/ international founders can serve the global market.
- Product-market fit in the modern era: With the rise of remote work and digital sales/support, the demand for agile, cloud-based telephony platforms is significant — their timing was excellent.
- Scalable technology leveraged by major infrastructure (Twilio): Their choice of technology stack enabled speed of deployment and scale without heavy capital investment.
- Opportunity-oriented vision: They didn’t just aim to compete with telcos; they sought to reimagine telephony for modern teams — offering new value (CRM integration, analytics, global presence) beyond cheaper calls.
The Road Ahead: Vision & Growth Plans
Looking forward, KrispCall and its founders appear focused on:
- Expanding the number of countries — continuing to offer virtual numbers in more regions, and imaging further global coverage.
- Deepening integrations — working closely with CRMs, growth-tech stacks, and analytics tools so that telephony becomes part of a unified workflow rather than a stand-alone piece.
- AI/analytics enhancements — likely embedding more AI features (call-transcription, sentiment analysis, routing intelligence) to increase value for users.
- Channel & partner ecosystem growth — investing in affiliate and partner programmes to amplify distribution without heavy direct sales cost.
- Enterprise/SMB segmentation — while startups may be core customers, there’s an opportunity in the mid-market and enterprise segments that require global telephony at scale.
Maintaining service quality and uptime — as they scale across geographies and customers — will remain critical, ensuring reliability and support.
