CM.com plans to make India a tech hub the world can rely on

Indian engineers have driven growth and made this country the birthplace of many fascinating inventions that have made our lives better in every possible way. Be it the convenience of transferring money without any hassle with Unified Payments Interface (UPI) - an instant real-time payment system by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), or several private players simplifying your credit card payments with one-tap payments or having your groceries delivered under 10 minutes - homegrown products that are made by Indians for Indians is what makes the country such an attractive place to be. In fact, there’s a growing global consensus that India packs all the resources to make it the next major tech hub of the world. As per NASSCOM, India is the 3rd largest startup ecosystem with 200 active angels, more than 100 accelerators, 150 VCs and around 4,200 startups operating in the nation.

Given the sheer number of specialised engineers in the country, many MNCs favour India. Apart from being an incubator for tech specialists, what works in India’s favour is the inclusive work culture. The country has a holistic view of the IT sector and people prefer working for a company that looks after their mental health and overall well-being. Ever since the pandemic, the work culture in most IT companies has been vocal about work-from-home. Moreover, there’s trust visibility from the companies on their employees, which is unique to India.

Looking at such an amazing trajectory of the Indian IT professionals, CM.com, a Netherlands-based cloud software firm for conversational commerce, which serves innovative products in the B2B space, aims to make the most of this potential by making its India R&D hub into a powerhouse of innovation and technological marvel.

CM.com has evolved from a Communication Platform to a High-Tech Organization with a diverse portfolio. The portfolio addresses business markets like payments, contact centre as a service and conversational AI. The organisation helps businesses connect with people and other businesses via various platforms like telecom operators, worldwide payment providers and messaging channels.

While many of the products that are made in India are for Indians, CM.com plans to capitalise on this and put India on the world map. The brand has envisioned an India that not only caters to the needs of the country but the needs of the world. CM.com, through its initiative “CM Connect”, wants to establish India as a new R&D hub. The engineers working on “CM Connect” will develop products from scratch. The engineers will work closely with sales and marketing to create an outreach program to understand customer-specific needs. This will essentially create a cycle of trust and transparency between customers and the product.

Arman van Lieshout, Senior Product Owner, CM.com, spoke about CM Connect, “Many of our SaaS, messaging and payments products require integrations with external platforms (like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics) to truly maximise the value that our customers get out of their product. From conversational A.I. chatbots that communicate with CRMs, to our CCaaS solution getting data from an OMS, to CRMs that post records to our customer data platform. To avoid a complex web of point solutions, we are launching a new product, CM.com's Connect solution. External platforms integrate with Connect once, after which the data contracts, authentication and authorisation automatically cascade to multiple CM products.”

Sandeep Chanana, Head of HR, APAC, CM.com, said, “India has a lot of potential that can make it the IT capital of the world. And for that, a lot of effort needs to be put into a dedicated R&D hub where professionals can develop products for India and the world. With this vision, CM.com aims to turn India into one of its key R&D hubs.”

Talking about the work structure of the India-based engineers for CM.com, Sandeep said, “For CM.com, engineers will work in autonomous India-based teams. The teams will work together with the rest of the global organisation to deliver powerful, well-designed products that impact their customers and the organisation. These teams will be responsible for their own go-to-market, product strategy, and positioning, working closely together with other product teams within the organisation. To enable this, CM.com has already started hiring engineers for the R&D hub in Bangalore who are keen to build a legacy to enhance and generate positive customer experience.”

Expanding its footprint in Asia, the Dutch IT firm is growing rapidly in the region. As of now, CM.com has offices in countries like Singapore, China and Japan and is looking to expand into more countries. The world knows that India is a growing market, and CM.com sees this as an opportunity to make India as the next IT hub. To know more about CM.com, click here.