Slack enters India market, announces mission to help Indian companies embrace a digital-first approach to the workplace

Slack officially launched in India, announcing its mission to help Indian companies navigate the transition to a hybrid workplace by establishing a digital headquarters (‘Digital HQ’).

Having long championed a digital-first approach to work, Slack’s leadership in the workplace collaboration space was further cemented by the rapid shift to remote work in early 2020 brought about by the pandemic. Today – as the impact of the pandemic eases and Indian companies increasingly shift to a hybrid work model – Slack is calling for leaders to be as thoughtful in designing their digital workplaces as they did in designing their physical offices before the pandemic hit.

Adopting Slack as a Digital HQ allows Indian companies to connect their teams, tools, customers, and partners in a digital place that’s fast, flexible and inclusive for a work-from-anywhere world. A Digital HQ allows work to flow, breaking down communication and collaboration silos, internally and externally; automates tasks that take away time from deep, meaningful work; and enables new, flexible ways of working, striking the right balance between synchronous and asynchronous.

One of India’s fastest growing internet commerce platforms, Meesho, has embraced Slack as its Digital HQ to save time, build company culture, streamline processes, and improve the way they work. Shikhar Saxena, Group Product Manager, said, “With the pivot towards remote working, multiple apps and systems were a huge hindrance to productivity and collaboration. We are glad to have Slack as a partner where everything happens in one channel, and what used to take a couple of days is now resolved in a matter of hours.”

Slack, which has users in over 150 countries globally, already has a significant following in India – representing one of the largest free user bases for Slack and positioned in its top 10 markets for paid teams globally. Slack has, in fact, been operating in India for four years, establishing a product engineering team in Pune in 2018 following the company’s acquisition of Astro. The Slack India team has since grown to include a go-to-market function in the last year, and now has over 120 employees across four offices in Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore and Gurgaon. Indian companies such as Zomato, Dreamsports, Freecharge, Razorpay, and many more are relying on Slack to drive their businesses forward.

July 2021 marked the close of the acquisition of Slack by Salesforce, the world’s #1 customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Salesforce has had a presence in India since 2005 and today has over 6,500 employees across Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad.