Bhavin Turakhia to invest $25 mn more in enterprise messenger Flock

Billionaire Bhavin Turakhia plans to invest $25 million in enterprise team messenger app Flock to enhance product innovation and meet global demand, the company said in a statement.

As the company closes in on US-based Slack, which offers a chat and messaging app for businesses, for a larger share of the enterprise market, it also announced on Thursday that it has expanded to the US, Brazil, the UK, Russia, and Spain, with the addition of native language support in each location.

"Since Flock entered the market, we've experienced significant global traction and 200% growth. Accelerated demand for the need to increase efficiency across teams has provided us with every reason to continue to expand globally and for me to prepare to invest additional capital," said Bhavin.

In September 2016, Bhavin, who operates four businesses under the Directi Group, announced that he would invest $110 million in all his ventures. With the latest funds, Flock alone will have a total investment of $45 million.

The Turakhia brothers, Bhavin and Divyank, had co-founded Directi Web Technology Pvt Ltd in 1998 with Rs 25,000 ($600 then) lent by their father. In 2014, Endurance International Group, a provider of cloud-based SMB solutions, acquired the group's four businesses for $160 million.

In August last year, advertising company Media.net, founded by Divyank Turakhia in 2010, was acquired for $900 million in cash by a consortium of Chinese investors led by Zhang Zhiyong, the chairman of Beijing Miteno Communication Technology Co.

While Divyank will continue running Media.net, Bhavin operates four businesses – Flock, an enterprise messaging software; Ringo, a telephony service (which is blocked in India); Zeta, which offers corporate meal vouchers; and Radix, a domain registry business. In an interaction with VCCircle last year, Bhavin said that only Radix is profitable as the remaining businesses are new and will take time to achieve profitability.