Breaking
LigaData powers 35+ communications service providers worldwide Telecom Data Fabric 4.0 launched at MWC Barcelona 2024 Asiacell deploys LigaData AI Fabric across Iraq Ooredoo Qatar builds data-governance foundation on LigaData One operator reports 183% year-on-year revenue increase Founded 2014 in Silicon Valley by Bassel Ojjeh & Krishna Uppala LigaData powers 35+ communications service providers worldwide Telecom Data Fabric 4.0 launched at MWC Barcelona 2024 Asiacell deploys LigaData AI Fabric across Iraq Ooredoo Qatar builds data-governance foundation on LigaData One operator reports 183% year-on-year revenue increase Founded 2014 in Silicon Valley by Bassel Ojjeh & Krishna Uppala
Company Dossier  /  Enterprise AI & Data  /  Palo Alto, California
LigaData logo

LigaData

The Silicon Valley data company teaching telcos to think - and act - like tech companies.

Founded 2014 ~140 people 35+ carriers Multi-cloud

LigaData, Silicon Valley. A lean, engineering-led team that says it "punches above its weight," building carrier-grade data infrastructure for operators from Doha to Kigali to Baghdad.

2014
Founded
35+
CSP Customers
100s of M
Subscribers Served
~140
Employees
The Story

Making data worth trusting

Every large telecom operator sits on a paradox: petabytes of data, almost none of it usable in the moment a decision needs to be made. Subscriber records live in one system, network events in another, billing somewhere else. LigaData built its business on closing that gap.

Founded in 2014 by Bassel Ojjeh and Krishna Uppala - two engineers who had shipped big-data systems at Yahoo! and the behavioral-targeting startup nPario - the company delivers data products and managed services that, in its own words, "help organizations transform data into trusted, AI-ready intelligence."

The customers are mostly communications service providers, with a secondary base in financial services. LigaData says its software supports more than 35 carriers and hundreds of millions of subscribers, unifying subscriber and operational data into a single 360-degree view so that analytics and AI have a solid foundation to stand on.

The framing the company likes is blunt: it helps telcos evolve "from Telcos into Techcos." That is a crowded promise in an industry full of transformation slide decks. LigaData's answer is less rhetoric and more plumbing - a data fabric, an AI fabric, and pre-built applications that sit on top of them.

"We charge a flat yearly subscription fee based on the features deployed - rather than the volume of data or number of users." Bassel Ojjeh, Co-founder & CEO
The Problem It Solves

Foundations before the AI

Most AI programs in telecom fail not on the model but on the data underneath it - fragmented, ungoverned, and too slow to reach the point of decision. LigaData positions itself upstream of the hype: fix the foundation, then let the AI apps follow.

What breaks without it

The everyday failure modes

  • Subscriber, network and billing data siloed across incompatible systems
  • Integration projects that drag on for months per source
  • No point-in-time recovery when a data lake is corrupted or hit by ransomware
  • Governance gaps that stall regulated-industry AI programs
How LigaData is different

Built for the industry, not generic

  • A telecom-specific semantic layer and pre-built ML components, not a blank platform
  • Integration measured in days rather than months
  • Managed services so a lean carrier team isn't left to run it alone
  • Feature-based pricing that ignores data volume and user counts

Where horizontal platforms like Snowflake and Databricks sell a general engine, LigaData ships an opinionated, telecom-shaped stack with the domain logic already wired in. That is the trade it is betting on: less flexibility, far less time to value.

Products & Services

What you can actually run

2024
Flagship Platform

Telecom Data Fabric

Carrier-grade, multi-cloud platform unifying subscriber and operations data into one 360-degree view, with a telecom semantic layer and pre-built ML. Version 4.0 launched at MWC Barcelona 2024.

2024
AI Applications

SubscriberIQ

A suite of telecom AI apps spanning subscribers, mobile digital services, marketing and revenue - segmentation, cross-sell, churn, lifetime value and price optimization.

2025
AI Orchestration

AI Fabric

Model lifecycle management and GPU-enabled AI orchestration at scale, for enterprise machine-learning and GenAI workloads.

2023
Data Protection

Time Machine

Protection for data lakes and lakehouses: multiple daily backups, hot/warm/cold tiering, archiving, point-in-time recovery and ransomware protection with DR on Azure, GCP and AWS.

2014
Core Platform

Data Platform (LDP)

Manages and analyzes petabyte-scale data and unifies siloed operational sources into a governed foundation.

2015
Open Source

Kamanja

An Apache-2.0 real-time continuous-decisioning engine that scored PMML models on live streams via Kafka and Spark. An early-generation product, now superseded by the fabric line.

Also offered: Managed Services, Professional Services, Strategic Advisory and Data Governance.

By The Numbers

Reported results

Selected customer outcomes

Figures cited by LigaData - approximate, self-reported
Revenue uplift
183%
CVM revenue lift
130%
KPIs tracked
1,100+
Integration time
Days

Outcomes are drawn from LigaData's published case material (including an Africa-based operator and MTN Rwanda). Independent verification was not available for every figure.

The Founders

Who built it

BO

Bassel Ojjeh

Co-founder, CEO & President

Came to the United States alone from Syria at 16. Built big-data and behavioral-targeting systems at Microsoft, Yahoo! and nPario, holds multiple patents, and now leads LigaData's product and go-to-market.

KU

Krishna Uppala

Co-founder & CTO

A data-warehousing and database veteran credited with 27 patents. Formerly CTO at nPario and Senior Director of Engineering at Yahoo!, he leads LigaData's technology architecture.

The leadership bench also includes a Chief Engineering Officer (Shekhar Rajvanshy), a COO (Khaled Jaouni) and a senior advisor drawn from the telecom operator world (Ihab Hinnawi, former Group CEO of Batelco).

Business & Market

Where it fits

Business Model

Software plus managed services

Enterprise B2B: a flat yearly subscription priced by the features deployed, layered with managed, professional and advisory services so carriers can operate the platform without building a large in-house team.

The Market

Vertical, not horizontal

Competes against horizontal data platforms (Snowflake, Databricks, cloud-native services) and telecom analytics specialists. Its wedge is domain depth - a stack pre-shaped for carriers and regulated data.

"Asiacell's data-driven culture and strategic vision for AI make them one of the most forward-looking telecom operators in the region." Bassel Ojjeh, CEO - on the Asiacell partnership, Nov 2025
Timeline

Twelve years, one problem

2014

LigaData founded

Bassel Ojjeh and Krishna Uppala launch the company in Silicon Valley to modernize enterprise data foundations.

2015

Kamanja goes open source

An Apache-2.0 real-time continuous-decisioning engine, presented at Strata + Hadoop World.

2016

Barclays "Fatafat" ships on Kamanja

Barclays builds an award-winning real-time decisioning engine on LigaData's open-source stack.

2023

Time Machine launches

Point-in-time recovery, tiering and ransomware protection for data lakes and lakehouses.

2024

Data Fabric 4.0 & AI Apps at MWC

Six telecom AI apps ship on one fabric; the MTN Rwanda case study is published.

2025

Gulf & Iraq expansion

Ooredoo Qatar begins Phase 2 of its data-governance programme; Asiacell deploys the Data Platform and AI Fabric.

Watch & Read

Interviews and demos

FAQ

Common questions

What does LigaData do?

It builds enterprise data and AI products - the Telecom Data Fabric, AI Fabric, SubscriberIQ apps and Time Machine - plus managed services that help telecom operators and financial-services firms turn siloed data into trusted, AI-ready intelligence.

Who founded LigaData and when?

It was founded in 2014 by Bassel Ojjeh (CEO) and Krishna Uppala (CTO), both former Yahoo! and nPario engineers, and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

Who are its customers?

Mostly communications service providers and banks. Named customers include Ooredoo, MTN Rwanda, Asiacell and, historically, Barclays. LigaData says it supports 35+ carriers and hundreds of millions of subscribers.

How does LigaData make money?

Through enterprise software subscriptions - a flat yearly fee based on the features deployed rather than data volume or users - combined with managed, professional and advisory services.

What is the Telecom Data Fabric?

A carrier-grade, multi-cloud platform that unifies subscriber and network data into a single 360-degree view with a telecom-specific semantic layer, reducing integration from months to days. Version 4.0 launched at MWC Barcelona 2024.

Share & Connect

Spread the word

Sources include ligadata.com, PR Newswire, TechAfrica News, Crunchbase, TheOrg and MWC 2024 coverage. Funding, revenue and employee figures are third-party estimates and approximate.