Zula is a mobile-first, cross-platform team communication app built for teams of all sizes, offering file sharing, group conference calling, team messaging, polling and one-to-one communication. The app launched initially on iOS and later on Android and was first unveiled in July and later appeared as the audience choice at TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield. Zula was founded by VoIP pioneers Jeff Pulver and Jacob Ner-David and is positioned in a crowded collaboration market that includes Slack, Convo, Hipchat, Hall and others. Microsoft Ventures is a continuing backer, having previously invested an undisclosed amount in a second seed round, which is notable given Microsoft’s ownership of Yammer and Skype. Financially, Zula has raised a total of $4.1 million to date, including the new Series A. Zula builds a mobile collaboration app that lets groups create secure text-based conversations, initiate voice calls instantly through the platform, and share files with integrations such as Dropbox. The company launched on iOS and has recently released an Android version. Zula is free for now but plans to introduce paid features in the future. Since its July unveiling and appearance at TechCrunch Disrupt, the company says it is onboarding hundreds of companies, though it declines to disclose exact user or revenue numbers. Co-founded by VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver and Jacob Ner-David (now CEO), Zula intends to use new funding to develop additional features including an HTML5 web client. Microsoft Ventures led the latest undisclosed seed investment, which the article describes as not large but strategically significant. Zula is a mobile-first teamwork app that lets users create group “Zulas” for chat, media archiving, @mentions, and one-touch VoIP conference calls. The product targets both enterprise and consumer users with a clean, low-complexity UI and invites via phone contacts, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google. The company runs a freemium revenue model with plans to charge low single-dollar monthly subscriptions for features like call recording, more than 16 people per Zula, and additional Zulas; it has also explored on-premise and white-label deals. Zula plans broader platform support (Android, HTML5/web, and a desktop client) and eventual third-party apps that run inside Zula groups. Technically it’s built on Google App Engine with its own secure messaging protocol; messages are stored on Zula’s servers in siloed, compartmentalized form and employees do not access them. The team is led from New York with development based in Israel and has raised early financing from angels and crowdfunding to date.

Total raised

$3M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Jun 2014