Callture is an Internet Telephony company founded in 2004 in Mississauga, Ontario. Callture was a spin-off of Telcan Inc, founded in 1997 in Waterloo, Ontario by three Engineering students while studying at University of Waterloo. The original founders continue to manage and take Callture to new horizons. The company provides business phone systems to companies and call centers, as well as prepaid phone services to consumers.

Since its inception, Callture has been investing heavily in its infrastructure to provide an exceptional service to its clients. The company has won several awards, such as Internet Telephony Product of the Year in 2012 and 2014 by TMCnet.com, and Best VoIP Company in Ocbober 2013 by rewiewauthority.com.

In 2013, Callture launched its new signature service to the Canadian market: oyemobile.com. OYE allows customers to easily make international calls, send messages, recharge their prepaid wireless account, and send payments to mobile phones worldwide.

OYE is sold by a network of retailers using Point of Sale terminals, with over 700 POS retailers selling OYE in Canada. Customers can also get the service at www.oyemobile.com or by downloading the App at www.oyemobile.com/app.

Callture runs two business units: the Retail Services Unit and the Platform Outsourcing Solutions Unit. The Retail Unit provides value-added voice services to businesses and consumers. Business services include its signature Virtual PBX with its business-class features. Other business services include enhanced toll-free service, virtual international phone numbers, prepaid long distance, and click-to-talk service.

Consumer services include unlimited long distance, calling cards, and pc2phone service. All Callture services include a user-friendly online portal with automated order processing. Callture´s Retail Unit has also developed an online affiliate program with instant signup and reoccurring commissions for life.

The Platform Outsourcing Unit offers end-to-end telecom outsourcing solutions for entrepreneurs around the world. Callture´s web-based platform contains proprietary software 10 years in the making. Callture offers a wholesale model, where clients concentrate on pricing, distributing, and selling their own private label products and services; and leave all the technical and provisioning aspects to us. Callture´s on-demand model makes it a necessity to help clients grow their volume and succeed in minimum time.

Mamoon Rashid
President and CEO

Mr. Rashid is an Engineering graduate of the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario. He is a co-founder of Callture in 2004. Mr. Rashid has over 15 years' experience in the IT and automotive industries. Before becoming President of Callture in 2004, he occupied the position of Director of Engineering of Telcan Inc. since 1997. During that period, Mr. Rashid led the engineering team at Telcan in building the proprietary platform and developing the complete IT infrastructure.

As leader of Callture, Mr. Rashid ensures the company continues to grow financially and technologically. Mr. Rashid directs and compensates employees for making clients happy, which results in innovative technology development and financial prosperity.


Siva Sanmuga
Vice President – Retail Services Unit

Mr. Sanmuga is also an Engineering graduate of the University of Waterloo with a Master's degree in Systems Design. His research was on Cloud-based image processing. He is a co-founder of Callture. Mr. Sanmuga has over 10 years' experience in Management and Finance. He previously occupied the position of Director of Finances at Callture, where he managed the development of many important projects, including the complete development of Callture’s CRM system and financial infrastructure. He is also the inventor of the patented technology Memo On Call.

Since his new position at Callture, Mr. Sanmuga has helped his unit successfully launch new value-added services to the North American market. He holds several patents in telecom-related technologies. At the same time, Mr. Sanmuga dedicates several weekly hours as a volunteer to his local community.


Anton Mendoza
Vice President – Platform Outsourcing Solutions Unit

Mr. Mendoza is an Engineering graduate of the University of Waterloo. As a co-founder of Telcan in 1997, and Callture in 2004, he has over 17 years' experience in the telecommunications sector, with a focus in the international telecom market and IP telephony platform solutions.

While traveling in 1995, he saw firsthand the business opportunity in all regulatory changes around the world; then again in 2003, he took advantage of the technology changes from PSTN to IP to help launch Callture's proprietary cloud platform. He continues directing in the growth of Callture's platform services in the US market, as well as the OYE retail services in the Canadian market.

In 1995, Anton Mendoza, Sanmuga, and Mamoon Rashid were attending the University of Waterloo's Engineering program. During one of the work terms, Anton and Siva met while working for the same employer. Siva and Mamoon met during their frosh week in 1992.

During Anton’s and Siva’s work term they traveled together for almost two hours each day. During their traveling time, they would discuss different business opportunities. The following year while Anton was on vacation he met a friend whose company was looking for a reliable international callback provider. Upon returning, Anton discussed this business proposition with Siva, both seeing potential and decided to pursue this further.

At the time, at least a $2M capital investment was required to establish a telecommunication business. As both of them were students, and came from below average income families, this investment was not possible. Having an engineering background, they decided to create the telecommunication switch from scratch.

At that time, Mamoon was introduced to Anton and the three founded Telcan Inc. Mamoon, at the time, had a part-time software development business, through which he had worked on projects for national and international firms.

In fall of 1996, in Anton’s basement, Mamoon developed the first callback switch and billing system using a Tandy (386) computer that was donated by Anton’s father. The system was built on Dialogic hardware. The initial system was built to handle 4 analog lines.

The founders operated on a part-time basis for more than 2 years while still attending school. Right after graduation in 1998, Anton was hired as the first full-time employee. The company acquired about $15,000 capital from the founder’s families and used this for equipment purchase, collocation space in New York, and deposit for carriers. And, this is how it all started.


Milestones

• 1997
  • Telcan was founded by Siva Sanmuga, Anton Mendoza, and Mamoon Rashid.
  • The company purchased voice hardware, developed a basic call processing software, and built a website to provide an international callback service. The first 5 clients were contracted that year, billing about $6,000 USD/month.
• 1998
  • The founders graduated from University and Anton started to work full time. His salary was partly subsidized by Siva and Mamoon, who had full-time jobs as engineers in other companies.
• 1999
  • The company moved to an office.
  • The company had 5 employees.
• 2000
  • Telcan was providing international callback service to resellers around the world, as well as selling the service online.
• 2003
  • The company started providing calling cards, toll-free numbers, and virtual PBX through its platform to end users, agents, and private-label resellers in the US/Canada market.
  • Callback was still the main business, providing most of the revenue for Telcan.
• 2004
  • The first VoIP application was developed.
  • Callture was created as a spin-off of Telcan. It uses the same founders as managers but in different positions.
  • Mamoon Rashid became President, Siva Sanmuga became VP of Business Services, and Anton Mendoza became VP of Platform Services and Consumer Services.
• 2005
  • Callback business considerably declined and phone forwarding service was still strong.
• 2006
  • Callture’s new wholesale model would provide prepaid platform services to entrepreneurs and service providers in the telecom industry.
  • As callback revenues continued to decline, Wholesale focused on VoIP callshop services to international dealers mainly in Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
  • The company invested heavily in developing the platform, focusing on calling cards, VoIP, PBX and retail portals.
• 2007
  • The wholesale department shifted focus on marketing the platform for prepaid phone cards and prepaid retail portals for PINless services in North America, as these products showed maturity.
  • The company adds new international carriers to the LCR, dramatically improving pricing, redundancy and voice quality.
• 2008
  • A wide array of reporting tools for service providers was added.
• 2009
  • Introduced value-added services to its white-label e-commerce offering.
  • Launches IVR apps for activations, credit card recharges, and promotional programs.
• 2010
  • Adds U.S. mobile top-up to its platform.
  • Dramatically improves its VoIP phone service.
• 2011
  • Introduces wireless MVNO services to its platform clients.
  • Launches new POS portal.
• 2012
  • Introduces new Smartphone Apps for platform customers that allow users to make VoIP calls, send messages, and send mobile payments.
  • Further enhances websites and shopping carts for platform customers.
  • OYE was launched to the Canadian market.
• 2013
  • Continues to develop add-on features for its Smartphone apps.
• 2014
  • Introduces Prepaid Canadian Wireless Payment Services to OYE customers