Microsoft Teams' key architect joins Nextiva as CPTO

Nextiva, a business conversation platform, announced the appointment of Senthil Velayutham, a former chief technology officer (CTO) and chief architect for Microsoft Teams,  as its Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO). 

Velayutham has nearly 30 years of product and technology experience, of which he spent over 24 years in Microsoft where he held various leadership roles at Microsoft, including for Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, Microsoft Search and AI, and Microsoft Roundtable. As CTO/Chief Architect for Microsoft Teams, Velayutham helped scale the product from zero to 13 million daily active users in 53 languages, and across more than 180 countries. 

Most recently, Velayutham was chief product and technology officer at Trader Interactive, a Goldman Sachs and Eurazeo portfolio company, now acquired by carsales.com.  

In his new role at Nextiva, Velayutham will lead the company’s global engineering, product and technology teams. 

“Nextiva is on a mission to transform how businesses connect and engage with their customers and teams,” said Tomas Gorny, Co-founder and CEO, Nextiva. “As we look to the next phase of growth, Senthil is the right leader with a real passion for customer driven innovation, and an impressive track record of building market leading products and leading highly effective, global teams.” 

“Nextiva believes that customer experience is the key to business success. In the next phase of transformation, Nextiva will provide industry leading solutions that enable businesses to understand, engage and delight their customers across multiple channels,” said Velayutham.  

A bachelor of engineering (B.E) in computer science and engineering from Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu, Velayutham pursued Master of Science in computer science and engineering from Arizona State University, US 

Nextiva raised $200 million from Goldman Sachs Asset Management in its first ever funding round at a $2.7B valuation in late 2021. Earlier this year, Nextiva announced its acquisition of Simplify360, an AI customer experience platform. The acquisition opens the door to the Asia-Pacific market for Nextiva, as the company expands to support more businesses globally.