Nextiva bets big on India for global CX tech, opens largest innovation hub outside US in Bengaluru

US-based Nextiva, one of the leaders in Unified Customer Experience Management (Unified-CXM), has launched a 35,000-square-foot innovation hub in Bengaluru, marking a significant milestone in its global expansion. The new facility—its largest outside the US—will serve as a strategic centre for product innovation and technology development, reinforcing India’s growing role in the company’s road map.

With 300 employees, the Bengaluru hub is poised to drive the next generation of platform capabilities for Nextiva’s Unified-CXM suite, which integrates voice, messaging, email, chat, and social into a single, AI-powered system.

“Customer experience has become a key economic driver, and that’s the reason we are so invested in it,” said Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva, in an interview with Business Today. “The next era of CX technology is being built in India.”

Taking a dig at competitors, Gorny added, “Most solutions calling themselves ‘CX platforms’ today are rebranded from other domains. They’ve simply bolted on CX features, giving the illusion of being CX-first. We’re different—we built our platform from the ground up, specifically for CX.”

India: a core engine in the product strategy

Founded in 2008 and backed by Goldman Sachs, Nextiva holds over 50 patents across AI, automation, and customer experience. The company serves more than 100,000 clients globally, including major Indian enterprises like Tata, ICICI, ITC, Ola, PhonePe, CRED, etc.

India now leads several critical aspects of Nextiva’s product development. A major AI-led innovation in customer experience, slated for global rollout later this year, has been primarily developed in India.

The Bengaluru hub also integrates operations from Simplify360, a Bengaluru-based AI-powered, social-first CX platform acquired by Nextiva in 2023. Now fully merged under the Nextiva brand, Simplify360 enhances the platform’s capabilities in multichannel and social CX.

“India is not just our fastest-growing region; it’s a strategic centre for our AI and product roadmap,” said Senthil Velayutham, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Nextiva. “Our new office in Bengaluru is where we’re building the future of customer experience—intelligent, scalable, and designed to meet the complexity of tomorrow’s business challenges.”

AI driving tangible results

Velayutham noted that in the past year, Indian clients have started seeing measurable results from AI adoption in customer interactions.

“For instance, some clients report an average 30-second reduction in 3–4-minute interactions. That’s a near double-digit percentage saving. We’re also seeing improvements in first-contact resolution and handling time. But this is just the beginning.”

The next frontier, he said, will focus on more outcome-driven metrics such as customer satisfaction, long-term retention, and share of wallet—areas where companies are only beginning to collect meaningful data.

Differentiation through a CX-first approach

Facing local competition from players like Gupshup, Nextiva is positioning itself as a CX-native platform rather than a retrofitted solution.

“Many companies start as CRMs or contact centre tools and then bolt on AI or CX capabilities,” Velayutham said. “We didn’t do that. We built our platform with customer experience at the core.”

He also emphasised the importance of data governance. “We take it seriously—how we model it, how we expose it, and how it flows through our systems.” Nextiva’s platform aims to eliminate fragmented customer data and enable orchestrated, personalized experiences at scale, powered by real-time AI across all channels. The company is also planning to roll-out different languages like Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu etc, to enhance customer experience.