Vopium raises $16.5M for low-cost international calls and text messages

Danish web voice company Vopium said it has raised $16.5 million from Indian telecom investor Raghuvinder Kataria as it tries to take on Skype.

The company said that its voice-over-internet-protocol international calling and text-message business is expanding rapidly, and the new money will help it expand worldwide. The company’s goal is to hit 10 million users in a few years. But that’s puny compared to Skype, which pioneered the mobile VoIP business. Vopium was aimed at immigrants who wanted to get in touch with relatives overseas without spending a huge amount of money.

With the deal, Kataria now owns the majority of Vopium. The Copenhagen-based company was started in 2006 by founders that included Pakistani entrepreneur Tanveer Sharif. The application is free to download and works on more than 900 phones. The apps have been downloaded 1 million times. About 250,000 people in 49 countries are using it. The number keeps growing about 30 percent per month.

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