A Start-up Aiming to Improve Efficiency and Productivity

Currently, Flock claims to be used by enterprises, tech companies, and start-ups to improve their efficiency and productivity

Technology is becoming increasingly prevalent in the world today. As businesses are increasingly entering into the digital era, managing the operations in the organization is getting tougher day by day. In an exclusive interaction with Dataquest, Bhavin Turakhia, Founder and CEO of Flock talks about his start-up and how it is trying to create a name for itself in the collaboration space. AIMING FOR COLLABORATION PUZZLE Flock is a real time messaging and collaboration app for teams that boasts to speed up, simplify communication and boost productivity. Scalable and platform-agnostic, it has a simple, clutter-free and intuitive interface. It provides one-to-one chat, a team directory, group chat, video conferencing, file sharing, image and video sharing along with various other tools for teams and companies.

According to Turakhia, Flock improves team communication, collaboration, efficiency and productivity by over 30%. What is unique about us is that we also offer a platform for developers - FlockOS, the world’s first chat operating system. With this, developers can build apps that are more native, richer, and much more powerful than in other team messengers. This helps organizations

and team to integrate all workplace activities and communication in one place - within Flock - helping get work done faster.

For example, while having a team meeting, a manager could i mmediately assign to-dos within Flock - without having to login to another app. What is even better is that the entire team would get notifications within the group whenever a todo is added, edited or marked complete. This would be much more convenient than having to navigate through different apps.

For customer convenience, Flock is supported across all platforms, including Desktop ( Windows and Mac), Mobile (iOS and Android), and the Web.

“Currently Flock is being used by big enterprises, tech companies, and start-ups to improve their efficiency and productivity by moving to a more collaborative communication model,” he added. Flock competes with Microsoft Teams which tries to address the same problem. There are other messenger apps which are active and have their clients from across the verticals. But the biggest challenge comes from WhatsApp which is increasingly eating into the messenger market.

EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION V/ S WHATSAPP COMMUNICATION

Although, WhatsApp is good for personal messaging, it is not suitable for team collaboration and communication, claims Flock founder. WhatsApp does not allow collaboration features which are key to editing and modifying documents, presentations and other stuff between teams in an organization, customers or stakeholders.

Another argument which Flock founder gives is that instant messaging services are not meant for workplace communication. Users have to share their personal email IDs, phone numbers or chat IDs with work colleagues, something they might not be comfortable doing on WhatsApp. Users end-up using and installing multiple chat clients as their colleagues are using multiple platforms. On the contrary, Flock is a pure business specific chat application. You can sign in using your work email ID and all your office colleagues are auto synced into your contact-list. You don’t have to mix work and personal messages, he adds.

“Additionally, with our app store and webhooks, one can integrate their most frequently used apps and services directly into Flock. This makes sure that you receive real-time notifications and all important information in one place. It also eliminates the need to keep switching between multiple apps,” he added.

HOW ORGANIZATIONS PREPARE FOR REMOTE WORKING TEAMS

A dynamic work environment is the new age workplace mantra which includes remote working, flexi timing, remote log-ins etc. The company claims that the startups and tech enterprises were the early adopters while others are adopting this gradually. There is no doubt about the benefits of such practices. But the biggest challenges lie in competition, the market is already filled with Messengers and Corporate social networks that come with such features.

Flock founder, however, believes that India is at a very nascent stage as far as enterprise chat apps are concerned. He rests faith in the growing market in the near future. On the positive note, Flock has got its first set of customers 1mg, Gini & Jony, Yepme, Ricoh, Tim Hortons, Whirlpool, and Victorinox.