Turakhia believes instant messaging in enterprises is going to become bigger than email in the next 10-12 years in terms of total traffic and the time spent
Flock Founder and CEO Bhavin Turakhia
Since its inception in 2014, team messaging and collaboration app Flock has been quietly gaining foothold across the US, the UK and India by partnering with organisations, ranging from startups to large enterprises, including Tim Hortons, Victorinox, Tata AIA, ITC Hotels, Ituran, and Aranca.
Flock — founded by Indian internet billionaire Bhavin Turakhia — rolled out new pricing plans in a media event in Bangalore last week, which the firm claims are far cheaper than its close competitor Slack. According to Turakhia, the Flock app comes bundled with lots of unique features, which Slack has not offered yet.
e27 sat with Turakhia to know more about the app, the company’s future plans and the global workplace communication industry.
Excerpts:
How has the workplace chat space evolved over years? How is it going to change in the coming years?
The evolution of the enterprise communication industry over the past 10-15 years can be divided into four phases. First, the non-existence of it. About 10-15 years ago, there were no workplace messaging apps per se. Vast majority of people used emails.
In the second phase, only big enterprises had on-premise enterprise apps like Jabber.
Subsequent to this era, lots of smaller enterprises started adopting enterprises messaging by virtue of using personal messengers softwares, such as Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp Messenger, etc.
Now, we are somewhere in the fourth phase, where we have proper enterprise messaging apps like Flock. Lots of organisations have now seriously started adopting workplace chat apps like Flock and Slack.
Also Read: Beyond communication, Slack wants to become the operating system for the future of work
I think instant messaging in enterprises is going to become bigger than email in the next 10-12 years, in terms of total traffic and the time spent. Thousands of companies use Flock, and organisations which have been using this for six months or so say their employees are logged into Flock around six to eight hours a day, while the use of emails has become less important.
Do you mean to say email is going to be obsolete?
No, I don’t think email is going to be obsolete. There are two very different use cases for emails and enterprise communication apps. Email is very useful for asynchronous communication, which doesn’t have an immediate requirement for responses. Moreover, email is far more detailed, whereas instant messaging is meant for real-time communication. So there are lots of use cases for emails. I think apps like Flock will become the dominant form of communication in enterprises, but email will continue to have a place.
How do you differ from popular workplace communication app Slack? What is your USP?
Flock is the only messenger that comes bundled with other productivity tools, although other team messengers have started offering these features now. We are far better than Slack in many ways.
On the Flock app, you can create tasks for your team members and follow up on them. The app also comes bundled with a rich pool-in feature, a reminder, and audio conferencing, which no other apps have offered yet. While most apps offer audio and video VoIP calls, we offer a proper audio conferencing bridge. You can dial in from your local phone, and participate in an audio call.
When it comes to pricing, we charge only US$3 per month per person (In India, it is just US$2 per person per month), whereas Slack charges up to US$12.5 depending on the plans. In effect, you can bring four teammates on Flock’s Pro plan for the price of one on Slack’s Plus plan.
Now, suppose you have a 100-people strong team, but need only 50 on the pro plan. You can simply buy 50 licenses and let everyone else stay on as unlicensed users. No need to pay for every user, unlike Slack.
You can also invite vendors or clients to work with you on Flock by simply adding them as guests on Flock at no extra cost.
We also have process automation tools that allow you to design and automate any process within your organisation. For example, you can create a reimbursement workflow or a travel request work flow, where an individual can start the process and Flock will automatically remind the people for their tasks, follow up with them and keep updates the entire process.
When it comes to user interface, Slack is more usable if you are talking about just a hundred people. But if you have thousands of users, Slack is a nightmare to manage the conversations. On slack, you don’t have the ability to get all your live conversation in one place and instead, you need to scroll and find people on the left panel, whereas in Flock every live conversation bubbles up to the top, so that you automatically have the advantage of having the ability to communicate and switch far more faster and efficient.
But with umpteen features, your app looks so cluttered. We at e27 has been using Slack for several years and we find it more user-friendly…
Yeah, we realise that the app looks a bit cluttered now, but three weeks from now, you will see a new Flock where all the clutters will go away. We are working on progressive discovery. You will see a fully clutter-free interface on the left.
I think the most important thing for Flock in comparison with Slack is that the chat interface itself. As I mentioned earlier, when someone sends you a message, you need to scroll down or up to see the message. When multiple people send you messages, you will have to keep scrolling up and down to see the messages, which people have found frustrating and time-consuming. When you have less than 100 people it is fine, but when you have thousands of people, it becomes hard.
In Flock, all your unmuted conversations bubble up to the top. So I never have to go scroll down to find the person and it saves a massive amount of time. So I would say the use cases and scenarios in Slack are becoming unusable, and Flock really reins supreme.
You can also integrate your most frequently-used third-party apps such as Asana and Trello with Flock. You can choose from over 60 apps listed on our apps tore or build your own.
Facebook has also started offering workplace chat apps. Do you face any threat from this social media giant?
Personally, if you ask me that questions, I would say I have never thought of anyone as a threat. We have competed with Microsoft, Google, GoDaddy and many large companies in many spaces, but we have never looked at any of them as a threat. Although there are many players in the industry, I think my product is equal or have more quality to gain substantial market.
As for Facebook, the social app has a digital connotation to it. Most organisations don’t want to bring Facebook into the workplace because there are productivity loss associated with it. Most firms are afraid of information leakage. When you sign up for Facebook team communication app, you are automatically creating an environment where you have Facebook in the company. There are challenges that are going to face in that brand umbrella.
I am sure Microsoft, Slack and Google will continue to be big competition, but I am not entirely sure of Facebook yet.
You don’t seem to be giving much importance to Artificial Intelligence, which is the buzzword in the instant messaging space these days. Why?
Can you show me at least one AI application that has dramatically changed your life? The answer is no, right?
Of course, AI and Machine Learning are game-changing technologies, but they are still far behind the basic communication needs. Time is not right for us to integrate AI features into our app, but you can be rest assured that we will have enough investment in this space at the right time, but the time is not today.
Today, I would rather go to an enterprise and say improve your productivity by making communication real time. There is no doubt that there will be substantial investment in this space by everyone, who manages information, including Flock which is a communication hub for every company. It is not really the time to make a massive investment and create an impact through AI yet.
What are your key go-to-marketing strategies to take Flock into the global market?
We bank on mainly three strategies: Content marketing and inbound marketing; partnerships and alliances with companies; and free sales.
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