What is Flock all about?
Rival to Slack, Flock is a web-messenger tool used at work to run projects within the team. Following a funding of $20 million, Flock received another $25 million by CEO Bhavin Turakhia. It has recently expanded to US, UK, Russia, Spain, Brazil and has native language support for every country. Turakhia said that the company has seen 200% growth since its inception in 2014.
Bhavin Turakhia
Bhavin Turakhia is an Indian entrepreneur, known for start-ups like Media.net and Directi. This young billionaire is also the founder of Flock. From messaging, sharing documents to holding virtual conferences, Flock aims to take up on popular enterprise-messaging tools like Slack and 'Facebook for Work'.
Condition of Indian start-up ecosytem
There are several challenges Indian start-up ecosystem faces, given the nascent stage it is in. Recently, the often "over-glamorised" start-up space went through a tough time colored by accusations of sexual harassment, incidents of bankruptcy, and ugly family feuds. The cases raise questions about governance issues (ShopClues), bankruptcy proceedings (Stayzilla), and workplace culture (TVF), none of which get any importance in the Indian setting.
Flock's challenges before its rise
Flock lacks big system integrators which are already hitched to Slack. Without the support of Cognizant, Infosys and others, Flock may require longer time to establish itself, despite increasing productivity in teams. Although Turakhia mentions its steady rise, Vir Gogia from Greyhound Research observed that Flock may need to integrate itself with enterprise products offered by Microsoft, Oracle or SAP.
Flock's Impact
In conclusion, Bhavin Turakhia's reputation of fetching revenues seems to put Flock on the bright side. Currently the team messenger service has 50k weekly active users and 25000 companies using it. Notable among them are Tim Hortons, Gini and Jony, Yepme, Whirlpool, etc.
