Slack– the messaging service designed for workplaces– is officially announcing its entry into the Indian market, as it seeks to help companies with their digital transformation. Slack executives stressed that enterprises would need to focus on a transition to a hybrid workplace by establishing a digital headquarters (‘Digital HQ’). And Slack hopes its product can be at the centre of this transformation.
It should be noted that Slack has been present in India over the last four years, though this was focused mainly on research. It has had a product engineering team in India since 2018, located in Pune.
The company revealed that India is one of the largest free user bases for its product. Globally, India is also among the top 10 markets for paid teams on Slack. Slack has a free component and a paid one, depending on the size of the enterprise.
The Slack India team now has over 120 employees in four offices in Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore and Gurgaon. Indian companies such as Zomato, Dreamsports, Freecharge, Razorpay, Meesho and others are relying on its services.
“Now millions of people have tasted flexibility after a career has been without it. I think it’s very, very difficult to go back. The reliance we developed on synchronous work… is inefficient. Slack’s mission is to make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive,” Stewart Butterfield, co-founder and CEO of Slack, said during the launch event.
He also stressed the importance of a digital-first approach to work, and that company leaders would have to consider hybrid as an important part of the work culture. Slack envisions its product as a ‘Digital HQ’ for companies, including those in India.
“The digital HQ is more important than the physical HQ. And it has many advantages. There are enormous productivity gains to be had, because the digital HQ is infinitely flexible and cheap to rearrange, whereas the physical HQ is obviously very much fixed,” Butterfield said.
“We kicked off our go-to-market presence in India in the early part of last year. And that is that part of the business has seen rapid tremendous growth from six employees in the last year,” said Rahul Sharma, AVP & Country Manager – Slack, adding that the company has seen an incredible response from enterprises in the country.
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“Many companies dip their toes in the water with the free version of our product, and then they upgrade that and adopt more functionalities of the platform. So the adoption of Slack in larger enterprises starts with usually the technical areas of the organisation, or CIO or CTO, and then it grows from there,” Sharma said, adding that they were seeing organic growth in the market.
Slack also talked about its recent survey with over 2,000 Indian knowledge workers. The survey showed that four in 5 respondents wanted flexibility, and a significant 80 per cent would seek a role elsewhere if their employer didn’t accommodate this. The study also showed that workers wasted an average of 47 minutes a day switching between the various apps they use to do their jobs.
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