Sinch CMO Jonathan Bean decodes the exploding CPaaS industry

We live in a mobile-first world, with smartphones being owned by 80% of the Internet users. Customers currently have a myriad of gadgets, such as Alexa, and various interactive mobile communication channels to choose from. The importance of contextual and relevant real-time communication has never been stronger, and CPaaS systems are effectively meeting this demand. Many businesses have benefited from the introduction of cloud communication technology, which allows them to have real-time communications with their customers regardless of their device or location.


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In recent years, businesses have been increasingly aware of the necessity of an integrated communication experience. Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) industry has gained prominence in India. CPaaS will boost UCaaS and CCaaS convergence in 2022, allowing for a more integrated communication experience.

Sinch’s leading cloud communications platform lets businesses reach everyone on the planet in seconds or less through mobile messaging, email, voice and video. Sinch is committed to serving the local and regional companies that need a leading CpaaS partner with expertise in the local regulatory environment.

In an exclusive interview with Adgully, Jonathan Bean, Chief Marketing Officer, Sinch, elaborates on how Sinch holds a strong customer base with leading positions in banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), among others in India.

What cases are driving the CpaaS market? How did the pandemic affect the CPaaS market and Sinch’s growth?

CPaaS is exploding as an industry. Gartner said that in a couple of years, 90% of the enterprises will be using CPaaS APIs in order to compete and enhance their digital competitiveness. That’s up from about 20% a couple of years ago. We are seeing an explosion in CPaaS and in companies using it.

There are three big trends that are dominating CPaaS at the moment and what is happening in enterprises today. One of those is the movement to the cloud, moving a lot of things up into the cloud for companies, to be able to compete. The second thing is digitalisation – with the pandemic hitting, companies began to digitalise themselves at an accelerated rate. The third thing is customer experience – the focus on customer experience and being able to compete, because companies can no longer compete globally on the price point, there will always be someone that is cheaper than them, and no longer can they really compete on product differentiation, because someone is going to come along in the market and have the same products or functionality. But where you can compete is on customer experience and customer satisfaction. These are the areas that are emerging and driving the CPaaS industry growth.

If we look at the pandemic, companies had to adapt very quickly and needed to communicate very broadly with the customers on all channels. A lot of CPaaS players have a background in the SMS industry. The reason SMS was a popular communication channel during the pandemic, despite being an old technology, was because it is comprehensive and is on every single mobile phone on the planet. It has hugely high open rates of 98% and 90% read rates, which is a very high penetration. Adding to this, companies used email, voice and conversational channels like WhatsApp.

What are the biggest challenges that the CPaas industry has to face?

The biggest challenge is catering to the audience. The CPaaS industry grew up very fast, focusing on the technological audience, the developer who could take an API and build an application. Now we have the business user as well within a company. We offer one API that can offer different multiple channels, basically conversational API as well as SMS APIs. The business user needs a front end, a graphical user interface, to be able to work out what their customer journeys are. This is the biggest challenge to cater to the audience as well as the developer.

Everyone is calling themselves CPaaS today, but there are very few companies that are truly CpaaS. Everyone wants to be CpaaS, but there are very few players that have the quality, the scalability and the security. If you are a company and choosing a CPaaS provider, you really need to make sure they are of good quality, able to scale and provide security.

What do the global trends say for the Communication platforms as a services Industry?

The whole movement to cloud, digitalisation and customer experience is a global trend. Another biggest thing affecting marketing is the taking away of third party cookies by Google. We have been addicted to third party cookies for the last decade, putting cookies on people’s machines and just basically retargeting them with ads is going away. Entering into a cookieless world is huge; Forrester talked about zero party data, which is another trend that really driving the CPaaS industry in a big way. Sinch is a leader in conversational solutions, we talk about a movement from cookies to conversations.

How does the CPaaS industry see India as a country with booming start-up companies and business economies?

I have personally always loved India and done a lot of business here. We have five very strong regions at the Sinch. India, with its technological leadership globally and also its size and its scale, is a critical market for Sinch. That is why we came into the market a few years ago. We bought ACL, which was a leading messaging player in the market, we also combine that with the division of sap the German software company, called STI.

ACL had a large number of employees and a big base in India as well, we combined that to make Sinch India. Sinch is not just a SMS and OTP company, but it is whole Asia and India coming together, which makes it a leading company in the CPaaS industry. The size and the scale of India is fantastic and the innovation that we see in customer experience, if you are ahead in India you are ahead on conversational channels that are in most parts of the world.

Where do we see Sinch bringing businesses together in Future?

Sinch is going to stand in the centre of calling businesses, we would like to say that we enable businesses and we simplify lives. We were founded in 2008 and now we have put a market cap of $3 billion, so we are very entrepreneurial ourselves. We still have the founders working in our business ourselves.

We will provide a forum for both start-ups and established enterprises to explore new ways of communicating with their customers, because they both would want to make life easy for their customers.

We talked about simplifying life by bringing businesses and people closer together, that’s exactly what we will do. We would love to scale up start-ups as well as help big companies to innovate so that they can compete with each other. If we look at financial services, we have the NeoBank, we have payment start-ups – all are Sinch’s customers because they want best connectivity in India. There’s a lot of innovation that can be found within the enterprise, there’s a lot of innovation that can happen in the start-up ecosystem, which is venture funded and we want to provide them the ability to reach their customers and give excellent customer experience, which allows them to compete in the marketplace.

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