Shabodi Raises $10.3M in Series A Funding to Drive 5G Innovation

Shabodi, the next-gen 5G application enabler, has raised $10.3M in an oversubscribed Series A round led by CEAS Investments and SineWave ventures, to help enterprises accelerate the development and deployment of network-aware applications on Advanced LTE, 5G, Wifi 6 and 6G.

Existing investors Blumberg Capital and Counterview Capital also participated in this round, joined by 5G Open Innovation Lab, Green Egg ventures, Maccabee Ventures, Supernode Ventures and Vishal Gupta, Global CIO and CTO at Lexmark. Veteran telecom entrepreneur and Shabodi investor Joe Beatty is joining investors Bruce Taragin of Blumberg Capital and Vishal Makhijani on Shabodi's board of directors.

The Toronto-based company was founded in 2020 by startup veteran Vikram Chopra and former Cisco and Juniper Networks CTO Harpreet Geekee. Earlier this year, Ramesh Kaza, an early investor and former Global head of IoT at Cisco, joined Shabodi as President & Chief Commercial Officer to support the company's global expansion.

"We founded Shabodi to address the real-world challenge of simplifying advanced network (LTE, 5G, Wifi 6 and 6G) innovation at the enterprise level for application developers. For developers, the network has always been considered a "blackbox." This is the paradigm Shabodi is enabling as 5G promises to overhaul how enterprises build and deploy applications, no longer constrained by connectivity requirements, said Vikram Chopra, CEO & Co-founder, Shabodi.

"The impact of the pandemic and other global geo-economic challenges are challenging the status-quo for sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, mining, oil and gas among others, prompting them to evolve their business models to take advantage of 5G's capabilities. Our vision is to lead this transformation from the front with our Application Enablement Platform (AEP) guiding customers with deeper insights into how their applications interact within the network and how to deploy "network-aware" applications for faster ROI on their 5G investments," Chopra added.

"Private 5G promises to empower businesses with the speed and security they need to transform customer and employee experience. Shabodi is well-equipped to address enterprises' challenges on this journey by simplifying and accelerating 5G application building and deployment," said Joe Beatty, a long-time telecom entrepreneur and now a Shabodi investor and board member. "The company's Application Enablement Platform is timely. Many global enterprises have already started deploying 5G and are either already looking or will soon look for solutions to maximize its use and ROI. I am excited to partner with Shabodi on their journey and can't wait to see how they enable 5G innovation for enterprises."

5G Open Innovation Lab, NSIN Propel, and IDC are among the industry organizations that have recognized Shabodi's contribution to the future of advanced networks. 5G is in its nascent stages globally, but Shabodi is already enabling mission-critical use cases on behalf of its customers. For example, in 2022, Shabodi supported AI image processing- streaming multiple videos over a network in a manufacturing plant, using API calls to allocate resources to support higher quality videos. Another organization is using remote rendering of a digital twin application over 5G and using API calls to improve video quality and reduce latency.

Shabodi continues to demonstrate the meaningful impact that its technology can have on enterprises across industries, as 5G increasingly becomes a critical enabler of growth," said Bruce Taragin, Managing Director, Blumberg Capital, who led Shabodi's Seed round last year. "5G will shape the future of enterprise technology and we believe Shabodi will be a critical partner to enterprises, system integrators, and telecommunications companies as they prioritize efficiency, flexibility, and reliability in their 5G deployments."