Malmö-based Telavox, which was originally founded by Lund students with the vision of challenging the traditional telecom operators with cloud-based business telephony, is selling its current core business of 24,000 company customers to Telia for approximately €330 million (SEK 3.8 billion), with a potential additional purchase price of around €17 million.
The two companies have signed a binding agreement under which Telia acquires Telavox’s Nordic customer base, covering 24,000 company customers and 325,000 end users in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway. The deal covers almost all of Telavox’s end customer market, with only small operations in the Benelux countries remaining. In total, 180 Telavox employees will change employers to Telia.
“We further strengthen our leading position in the Nordic business market by welcoming a new large customer base and a competent team to Telia, while increasing the pace of simplification of our operations. By bringing our services together in powerful, unified platforms, we can become more efficient, increase the pace of innovation and growth, and deliver even better communication solutions to our business customers throughout the Nordics,”
said Patrik Hofbauer, CEO at Telia
According to Telia, the acquired customer base generates 1.1 billion kronor, roughly €96 million, in annual revenue and approximately €26 million in EBITDA.
From Student Startup to Billion-Kronor Deal
Telavox was founded in the early 2000s by Viktor Karlsson and Fredrik Hedberg. Rapidus reports that during his military service at the Swedish Armed Forces radio agency, Fredrik came into contact with an early cloud-based phone switchboard, a technology that at the time only large organisations could afford. Together with Viktor, he dropped out of his studies in Lund and started Telavox.
In the 2010s, Telavox broadened its offering from a pure phone switchboard to a complete cloud-based communication platform, bringing mobile telephony, chat, video meetings, and contact centres together in one service. In 2024, the company turned over just over 1.5 billion kronor, approximately €130 million, with a loss of roughly €6 million. Revenue has declined since a peak in 2022.
“The partnership makes it possible for us to invest even more in AI, AI agent-based customer experiences, and self-service, while our services reach many more companies,”
said Viktor Karlsson.
Telavox will continue as an independent company, developing and selling the proprietary communication system that the end customers use. Telia, in turn, will buy a licence for the system and offer it to all its business customers.
