Tech company’s ambitious plans for the region comes as the GCC public cloud market is forecast to accelerate to $2.35bn by 2024
MessageBird, the world’s leading omnichannel cloud communications platform, is looking to make the Middle East among its largest markets globally, according to its top executive.
The company also has plans to hire “more amazing talent” with experience in scaling software businesses to beef up its operations in the region.
“The Middle East market is an exciting market, and could be one of our largest in time due to the fact that there is already a strong messaging-first culture there,” Robert Vis, founder and CEO of MessageBird, told Arabian Business.
Vis added: “We are currently ‘super focused’ on enabling the best businesses in the GCC region to be able to talk to their customers the way their customers already talk to their friends and at a time that suits them and on a platform of their customer’s choice with its trio of omnichannel products.”
MessageBird’s ambitious plans for the GCC market assumes added significance after recent research by the International Data Corporation (IDC) that said the GCC public cloud market is expected to more than double in value by 2024, growing from $956 million this year to $2.35 billion.
“Countries in the GCC are witnessing accelerated cloud adoption, aided by ongoing investment by cloud providers and the continued need for remote working arrangements,” IDC said.
MessageBird, which last week announced raising $200m series C funding from a clutch of global investors, said it will be used to triple the size of its global team and further expand into its core markets in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
The UAE and Egypt are currently the key markets for MessageBird in the Middle East.
Its trio of omnichannel products are Inbox – omnichannel customer support, Flow Builder; RPA for business messaging; and omnichannel Chat Widget – for turning static web pages into dynamic customer conversations.
“I think we have a unique role to play in helping businesses there (Middle East region) to make the transition to seamless omnichannel communications with their customers, who are already using these messaging platforms at scale to talk to their friends,” Vis said.
Vis also revealed that the Middle East is one of MessageBird’s fastest growing markets.
“I’m proud that we have been able to build such a strong presence there and strong connectivity which allows us to help local businesses communicate with their customers not only across the region but also internationally,” he said.
On expanding its team to support growth plans for the region, Vis said: “We just announced our new ‘Work Anywhere’ policy – under which ‘Birds’ can choose where they set up their workspace as long as it’s in the same time zone as their team – so we’ll be looking to hire the best talent, with the most experience scaling global software businesses, in the region.”
The company currently has 24 team members from different parts of the Middle East including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iran.
