Notion announced Wednesday that it had acquired Automate.io in India. The startup builds connectivity and integrates with over 200 services. As the startup aims to expand its product offering to appeal to tens to millions of people and businesses who are moving more to digital collaboration tools, Notion stated that it had purchased Automate.io.
The San Francisco-headquartered startup, which was last valued at $2 billion in private markets, said the acquisition of the Hyderabad-headquartered Automate will help Notion understand the know-how of and leverage the 200 integrations the Indian startup has developed to give users and enterprises alike the ability to bring their most workflows into Notion.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Akshay Kothari (chief operating officer at Notion) said that the acquisition is a first for Notion and a key piece of our strategic puzzle. He said it was a substantial acquisition but did not reveal the terms.
Automate, which had raised capital only once and was largely funded by friends and family, is now profitable. Notion can also set up an engineering center outside the U.S. to help it acquire Automate. He plans to open more offices in India in the future, as the startup product is popular among startups.
Automate employs around 40 people and has developed many integrations with companies operating in multiple industries, including e-commerce. Notion is one of the companies it has integrated with.
Automate can be used by Notion admins and users to connect to the collaborative platform with Slack, Gmail Mailchimp Salesforce, Google Workspace Office 365 Office 365, Dropbox WordPress, RSS Feed PayPal, Office 365, Office 365, Google Workspace Office 365, Office 365, Office 365, Google Workspace Office 365, Office 365, Office 365, Dropbox WordPress, RSS Feed, PayPal, and many other services. Each product has its own API. Automate worked with each API to create pipes so that users don't have to worry about getting work done.
Automate was discovered by Notion a few months back when it released its API to the general public. They were new to me. They were our first partner, so I researched them. Kothari reached out to Ashok Gudibandla (chief executive at Automate.io) a few months back.
Our mission has been to automate repetitive tasks and make businesses more efficient. Gudibandla stated that users should spend less time integrating complex systems and more time creating and building the software they need.
We will be able offer the same automation and integration experience to a wider range of users around the world by partnering with Notion. We are delighted to join forces with Notion. Notion is an ideal partner who shares our commitment to creating a seamless, collaborative software experience.
Automate.io offers several paid plans at the moment and will continue to offer them to customers, stated Kothari.
Side note: As a long-standing Notion customer, Kothari asked me if Notion is currently working to add support for Apple Pencil or Spotlight search on Mac. Both of these items are on the firm's to-do-list. I was able to see some of the features the startup is currently working on. He also gave me a peek at the long list. The startup keeps track of every feature request made via Twitter. Spotlight search integration for iPhone should be available soon.
Automate.io is Kothari's assurance that Notion will be able to release some of these features sooner. We face the challenge of Notion being used by individuals, employees at companies, and companies themselves. Each individual has a different request. He said that one of our goals is to stay horizontal.
