Notion sees India as the next big growth market, says co-founder Akshay Kothari

Notion co-founder Akshay Kothari

Notion co-founder Akshay Kothari expects India to be the next major growth market for the productivity software company, which aims to challenge Microsoft and Google's dominance in the workplace.

"India is a very fast-growing market in terms of usage. We're very bullish on the market. Younger people particularly use it a lot… APAC, in general, is a big focus for us," Kothari told Moneycontrol in an interview at the firm's San Francisco headquarters.

Notion is also seeing growing adoption among businesses, especially startup unicorns, in the country, Kothari added.

Read: No point in thinking about three-year plans in the AI era. Building an adaptable, resilient team is key: Notion’s Akshay Kothari

While he didn't disclose any specific information on India usage numbers, the company crossed 100 million users globally in September 2024.

Founded in 2013 by Ivan Zhao and Simon Last, Notion initially started as a note-taking app and has since expanded to an all-in-one AI workspace spanning notes, databases, enterprise search, writing tools, forms, wikis, project management tools, calendar, and more recently, email.

Kothari, who was initially an investor in Notion, joined the company in 2018 as chief operating officer when it had just eight employees. He later earned the title of co-founder.

While Notion launched its note-taking app in 2016, it wasn't until 2018 that the productivity startup began to see rapid growth, following the release of Notion 2.0 which introduced a cleaner, more intuitive interface and features like notes, wikis, databases, and project management tools.

The $10 billion startup crossed one million users just before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, a number that jumped to 20 million by 2022 and 100 million by 2024.

Making Notion faster

To grow Notion's adoption in India, the company aims to focus on making its product faster, Kothari said.

"The top thing I would like is a bit faster Notion for India, so that it works well even on 3G and 4G connections," he said.

Another key area is adding support for local payment options such as UPI.

"People are just so used to UPI and other things here. Today, we have credit and debit cards, and we hear feedback about those not necessarily working that well," Kothari said. "Every time I'm there (India) every six months, it always gives me some ideas on how to evolve (the product)."

He conceded, however, that monetisation will take time in a market like India. "Part of it is probably like we grew up never paying for software. But it’s changing and people are starting to pay."

"I think the price itself may need to evolve a little bit so that it feels right for the market. But before that, I would like to support all the local payment methods," Kothari added.

Ramping up India R&D centre

Notion is also making significant investments in expanding its research and development (R&D) centre in Hyderabad.

"India is our only R&D centre outside the United States. We have (teams in) New York and San Francisco, and Hyderabad is the only other one. We got there through an acquisition a few years ago, but now we've rebuilt it," Kothari said.

Notion acquired Hyderabad-based integration startup Automate.io for an undisclosed amount in September 2021. The acquisition paved the way for the productivity firm to establish an engineering office in the city. Today, the Hyderabad office has around 60 to 70 employees, which is just under 10 percent of Notion’s global workforce.