SurveyMonkey, a US-based prominent player in online surveys and forms, has set up an office in Bengaluru, its first in India, as it steps up efforts to expand its global presence.
The office will serve as a hub for product development, research and development (R&D) and customer outreach, CEO Eric Johnson said at a media briefing in Bengaluru on October 16.
“The first phase for us is building out a team, ensuring that the development is progressing well and the early returns have been fantastic. After that, we'll start looking hard at what India can look like as a business opportunity for us,” Johnson said.
SurveyMonkey’s office is in Bengaluru’s Whitefield area and has a team of more than 50 engineers, product managers, and designers working on different parts of the company’s product portfolio, Johnson said.
The firm plans to double the base by March, expanding its workforce in areas such as human resources (HR), data, and security to strengthen its core operations. It also plans to continue hiring throughout 2025.
“25 percent of our R&D efforts will happen in India by 2025. There are certain functions like market research and audience, where we have moved the entire development effort to the country,” Johnson said.
SurveyMonkey, now owned by an investor consortium led by private equity firm Symphony Technology Group (STG), aims to leverage India’s highly skilled tech talent pool to enhance product innovation and meet increasing local demand for its services.
The Bengaluru team will also work with global teams on areas such as billing and payments, data analytics, and growth initiatives, the CEO said.
With the Bengaluru office, SurveyMonkey will have seven offices across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia.
The localisation push
SurveyMonkey offers support for 56 languages, including four Indian - Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, and Bengali.
English accounts for only 13 percent of the surveys sent in the country, Johonson said. The biggest contributor is Hindi, followed by Tamil, he said, without disclosing the numbers.
SurveyMonkey has seen a healthy growth in terms of customers in India, with over 2,000 paying customers in the country.
This includes enterprises like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Aditya Birla Group, Shapoorji Pallonji, and firms like Swiggy.
“With our local presence in India, this will provide a better opportunity to understand the Indian customer base and help us in fuelling the product innovation further,” Jeetendra Agrawal, SurveyMonkey’s vice president of engineering, said during the briefing.
Johnson said artificial intelligence (AI) has been an accelerant to business and will change the way how people use the product.
“We use AI actively for creating surveys and analysis. Mobile becomes an amazing input opportunity with AI because you don't want to type out and build a 20-question survey. You can do that in one simple prompt,” he said.
SurveyMonkey’s journey
SurveyMonkey was founded in 1999 by Ryan Finley and Chris Finkey as a simple tool for creating and distributing online surveys.
Private equity firms Spectrum Equity and Bain Capital acquired SurveyMonkey for about $100 million in 2009.
Finley stepped down, and late Dave Goldberg, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, was brought in as the CEO. After Goldberg's death in May 2015, Bill Veghte served as the CEO for six months before being replaced by Zander Lurie in January.
In September 2018, SurveyMonkey listed on NASDAQ, raising $180 million in its initial public offering. In 2021, the company rebranded its parent entity to Momentive, aiming to expand beyond surveys into the broader market of experience management and insights.
In February 2022, Zendesk announced a deal to acquire Momentive for $4.1 billion. Zendesk shareholders, however, rejected the deal.
In March 2023, a private equity consortium led by STG acquired Momentive to take it private in a $1.5 billion all-cash deal.
The deal was completed in June 2023 following which the company changed the name back to SurveyMonkey. It also named Johnson, who had joined the firm a year earlier as the interim chief marketing officer, the CEO.
SurveyMonkey has gained market share in the online surveys and forms segment and also provides real-time insights through an intuitive feedback platform.
“Customer feedback, employee feedback, and market research are our biggest use cases at present. About 80 percent of our customers are using us for these three options,” Johnson said.
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