Twilio boosts local presence with first Aussie office

Twilio has established a presence in Australia appointing former Oracle and Symantec executive, Richard Watson, as its first regional country director in Australia.

The Australian office marks Twilio's eleventh international office outside of the United States and will create jobs in sales, customer success, service and support in Sydney and Melbourne.

Watson brings 20 years of sales leadership experience to his role as country director and will be instrumental to the company as it expands its presence in Australia.

"International expansion represents a significant long-term growth opportunity for Twilio," says Twilio chief operating officer George Hu.

"This move builds on our existing customer and developer momentum in Australia and lays the foundation for building a significant long-term business in Australia and across the APAC Region. Richard will lead a broad effort to grow our Australia team, drive momentum, and build customer relationships. We believe we're only at the beginning of this incredible journey and we can't wait to see how our customers use Twilio to engage their consumers in a whole new way."

Twilio has more than 100 existing customers and partners operating in Australia and aims to expand this number as its team grows in the region.

Twilio's Australian operations will be led by Watson, who most recently led sales teams for enterprise, commercial and channels as senior sales director at Symantec.

Prior to Symantec, Watson also held sales leadership roles at Oracle and earlier in his career, at Sun Microsystems, RSA Security and CA Technologies.

"We have had a fantastic amount of organic traction here in Australia, with leading companies including Atlassian, zipMoney, Dominos and Airtasker already building and scaling their applications using the Twilio platform," says Watson.

"This is a testament to the quality of Twilio's product offering and also to the maturity of the Australian market. There is a strong culture of innovation here and IT leaders in Aussie enterprises recognise the opportunities that new technologies can offer their business.

Twilio's 'Bridging the Communication Divide' report last year surveyed 2,045 customers and 867 businesses across the US, UK and Australia and found that while 81% of consumers say it is often difficult to communicate with businesses, only 34% of businesses acknowledge communication as a challenge.

"Engagement between businesses and their customers continues to be a pain point and I believe Twilio will go a long way to help solve this problem, and help Aussie businesses to deliver extraordinary customer experiences at scale - and grow dramatically in the process," adds Watson.