Montreal’s PPLConnect Closes Seed Funding Round, Updates Virtual Phone App

Montreal virtual phone and text message app-maker PPLConnect has closed a round of seed funding from Sherbrooke Street Capital, for an undisclosed amount, and released several updates to its service, bringing it closer to their stated goal of providing “one inbox for all your messaging apps”.

PPLConnect describes its app as “the world’s first virtual phone”, mainly because it contains all the functionality of what you would normally do with your phone, without necessarily using or turning on your physical phone. PPLConnect launched an open beta version of their app at SXSW 2014.

“We know people use multiple messaging apps to communicate with all their contacts,” explains co-founder Jenviev Azzolin. “Our goal is to make it easier for them to receive all their messages in 1 place cross-device. We believe PPLCONNECT is the desktop dashboard for your phone.”

While people have gotten used to using multiple messaging services and apps sending out push notifications, PPLConnect proposes to unify them all into a single interface, coupled with their own over-the-top messaging service.

As well as consolidating the various streams and social chat services people have gotten used to using on their phone, the main feature of PPLConnect’s solution is that it’s cross-platform and device agnostic. Users can keep track of their chat activity on their desktop, as well as on their mobile devices.

The app frees users from relying on a specific device to access their phone or chat services. When a user registers their phone number with PPLConnect, they can then initiate a chat or phone call from a desktop computer. The phone doesn’t need to be “with” the user for them to initiate an SMS or phone call from the desktop. If the battery is dead however, users can still send SMS to other users of the app.

The PPLConnect app allows users to consolidate all their various messaging streams from Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Skype, Instagram, WhatsApp, Viber, Snapchat, Hike, Line, WeChat, KakaoTalk, Kik, Tango, Nimbuzz, MessageMe, and ChatOn.

The latest version of PPLConnect is available through the Google Play store.