India is one of the key markets in the world and thus has attracted the attention of global investors and prominent players like Amazon. Instances of foreign investors investing in Indian start-ups or acquisition of Indian firms by foreign companies has become a common occurrence as global players have been eager to tap into the Indian market. The latest firm to do so is San Francisco-based work collaboration company Notion, which acquired Hyderabad-based integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) start-up Automate.io in a cash-and-stock deal.
With the acquisition, Automate’s 40-member team will be absorbed into Notion and will continue to operate from Hyderabad, while Automate founder and CEO Ashok Gudibandla will be leading Notion’s team in India in his new role.
The acquisition will enable Notion users and admins to use Automate to connect the collaborative platform to Slack, Gmail, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Google Workspace, and other services.
According to Notion, which was valued at over $2 billion last year and has clocked a growth of more than five times in its weekly active users in the last 18 months globally and a growth of eight times in India, said that its maiden acquisition was a “strategic piece to our puzzle,” according to Notion COO Akshay Kothari. The acquisition will enable Notion to get a better grasp over the know-how (and leverage) the connectivity and integrations with over 200 services that Automate had developed during its six-year run.
This will enable Notion to expand its product and give enterprises and users the ability to bring their workflows into Notion, set up its first engineering center outside of the US and in India, as well as meet the rising customer demand to connect to tools like GitHub and SalesForce. Notion’s clients include prominent names such as Pixar, Samsung, Nike CRED, Byju’s, and Unacademy.
Notion already has offices outside the United States – it is present in Dublin and Tokyo as well, and it views India as a key market for growth and talent.
“Our mission has always been to support businesses by automating repetitive tasks and to be more efficient. We want users to spend less time dealing with challenging integrations, and more time building and creating the software they need,” said Gudibandla in a statement. “Together with Notion, we’ll be able to offer the same integration and automation experience to a broader set of users across the globe. We are thrilled to be joining forces with Notion, an ideal partner who shares our values and commitment to extending the power of a collaborative, seamless software experience.”
