INTERVIEW Chetan Chaudhary - Twilio
“We are finding a software approach is the better one we think which is why a lot of these organisations are
hiring software developers.” Chetan Chaudhary, Global VP of Partners, Twilio
Disruptive approach to cloud comms
Twilio has gone from strength to strength in the past year, recently closing its $3 billion acquisition of email API
platform, SendGrid. Its success is driven by a growing global customer portfolio which is supported by its partner
program, Twilio Build. Chetan Chaudhary, Global VP of Partners at Twilio, spoke to Comms Business about why he
thinks the market is ready for disruption
Comms Business Magazine
(CBM): Can you give us an
update on Build and the
approach you are taking?
Chetan Chaudhary(CC): Twilio
is a unique value proposition
business because we have a
blend of the cloud and the
traditional comms business.
We are a platform company
and an API rst company, my
role is to see how we build
routes to market, how do we
build for our strategic ISVs,
which SI relationships we need
to leverage to drive to right
sort of adoption of Twilio’s
products in the market.
e channel team is
relatively new compared with
he rest of the business, we
take an approach to allow
developers to build on top of
the platform and take it to
market. Currently we have
about 4.5 million developers
building on top of the
platform.
CBM: Where are you making
inroads with your SI
community?
CC: We developed our call
centre product called Flex
because we noticed a lot of that
market was driven through the
SI community, both resellers
and systems integrators. Flex
is extremely open and allows
for lots of integrations, you can
essentially customise on every
communications and UI level.
However it really requires a set
of systems integrators which
are open to this new software
approach.
We have been focusing on
building that ecosystem for
SI’s and enabling them to be
resellers within our platform.
I have spent the last six
months building that reseller
infrastructure so partners
can have better visibility
and control over individual
accounts that they bring to
Twilio, allowing them to have
di erent pricing models and
allowing us to go to market
di erently in certain verticals.
CBM: Are you attracting
traditional partners?
CC: You would be amazed
at the number of Cisco and
Avaya partners that have been
approaching us. Many of them
have had a great 20 plus years
with these types of vendors but
with the advent of the cloud
and the exibility that the API
approach from Twilio brings
they are seeing cracks in their
selling motions and they want
to build a cloud rst practice.
We are nding a software
approach is the better one we
think which is why a lot of
these organisations are hiring
software developers. ey
come to us to be a part of this
builder community which can
also give them all the same
levels of security that their
traditional vendors had.
CBM: What kind of
functionality are your
partners bringing to market?
CC: We have one ISV called
CallTrackingMetrics, they
have built out a complete
business analytics solution
so customers can now track
their calls and route them into
call infrastructure. is is a
fantastic example of someone
taking a traditional voice
communications and phone
numbers and making it into an
application using our platform.
System integrators are
taking our platform and in the
case of Flex they are integrating
into traditional infrastructure.
I recently spoke with one of
our SIs who wanted to use Flex
for all their communications
so they could have SMS,
Voice, WhatsApp, Facebook
Messenger, video all integrated
into a single platform. But
they also wanted the ability
to integrate a Cisco IP phone
inside the call centre. With
Flex you can do that because
it is entirely open, you could
Chetan Chaudhary, Global
VP of Partners at Twilio
have a SIP endpoint, webRTC
endpoint, an SMS endpoint
and manage it all within Flex.
In the UK VoxSmart
is taking a specialised
communications application
to the nancial sector to
enable them to have compliant
communications across their
di erent channels. ey aren’t
a huge company, but they are
creating unique solutions in
their sector and they are doing
it at global scale. For the rst
time they are able to address
nancial institutions in EMEA
and the rest of the world. ey
do that all through the Twilio
platform.
52 | Comms Business Magazine | September 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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