AI is changing how software gets built. Today you can go from a simple prompt to a working application in a matter of seconds or minutes. But as the barriers to building software fall, the real battle is shifting to who can turn an idea into a product that people actually want to use. Now that puts Figma at an interesting crossroads. The company that made collaborative design a core part of product development is now expanding into AI-powered design, coding and app creation, putting it in direct competition with both established software giants and a new generation of AI-first challengers. India is very much central to that next phase as one of Figma's largest user markets, a growing opportunity for monetization, and now a focus for its global expansion with a Bengaluru office. So where does Figma go from here? How big can the AI opportunity get, and what will it take to turn a massive user base into a much bigger business? Hello and welcome to this special conversation. I am now joined by Dylan Field, the co-founder and CEO of Figma, to discuss the company's next phase of growth, its India ambitions, and the future of building software in the age of AI. Dylan, thanks so very much for joining us here, since it's your first time here.
How's it been so far? You're only going to be in Bangalore.
Yes. Unfortunately, I'm not going outside of Bangalore, but I am having the best time and everyone's been so welcoming. Thank you for having me, by the way.
No, absolutely. It's our pleasure. You know, let's just start there. We are here at Config, it's the first time you're bringing it to India. Why now? What do you make of the market? What do you see here that you're not seeing in your markets outside, and what gets you excited about the country here?
Oh gosh, where to start? There's so much happening. I mean, all the things that you know, the scale of India is incredible.
The complexity is fascinating.
The way that digital companies are transforming and how ahead of the curve they are is truly impressive. And also that's balanced by a groundedness, a humility that, you know, we don't always see in San Francisco. So I enjoy that quite a bit too. And I think that the area I have been most pleasantly surprised by is how the leaders I'm speaking with here, they just understand that design is the differentiator. So many leaders are trying to figure out how to invest more in design, how to take their populations who are non-designers and make them much more design-literate for their customers, for ways they can develop better internally. Because you zoom out and globally, code is becoming more of a commodity. We still have engineers. We're hiring engineers at Figma. I'm not saying engineers are going away, but the nature of engineering is changing. And for a whole class of things that you can do with code now, designers are able to operate at the level above that, building faster. So what matters? It's design, it's craft, it's point of view, it's brand, it's your marketing. That's how you stand out, especially in an attention economy that's, you know, even more competitive by the day, which you're well aware of in your world. And what's amazing about the leaders in India is, more so than anywhere else I've seen, they get it, and they're investing in design. And I think that's why we're seeing just such an amazing energy here at Config India, and that's why we're so excited to come and do this event here too.
Well, there's lots I want to pick on, including, you know, code getting commoditized, but let me get back to the India market. I know you don't share your revenue numbers, but it is your second largest market by user base.
Daily active users. Yes, daily active users.
But would you say the market's substantially large enough for you now, or is the bigger opportunity still ahead? How quickly is the market growing?
Yeah, put it this way. I mean, our team, we are rapidly growing our team in India. And we have so much we can do to better serve the India market and our customers that are here. And so that's what we are really committed to and trying to action on, is to make sure that we're able to bring in folks to our team who can help all these customers. And that's not just sales people or marketing. This is folks who are like designer advocates and can work with customers, developer advocates. And what we've seen typically with our trajectory when we go to new markets is it starts more sales, then it goes into these other areas, and then it goes more into product design, actual innovation and product-facing, user-facing stuff. And I'm excited for that too. Eventually, you know, the first focus is serve the customer, but the talent here is, as you know, amazing.
And I think that's just so clear today too. Would you want to share any hiring plans you have for India?
We're hiring. Look at our careers page. If you're interested in design and the way that workflows are changing, the ways that we can go and help customers create, Figma's got a big role to play, and we're constantly hiring and trying to find the best people to join our team. So, but please apply if you're watching. figma.com/careers.
All right. Thanks for that advertisement, which we shall be playing on TV. But you know, let me come back to your customer base, which is 40% of the BSE 100 companies. I mean, it's everyone from a startup to a large corporation. What I wanted to understand is where the growth is coming from? I mean, is it people that are using it still at the free, at the base level, or are paying users growing as well substantially for you here?
So Figma's whole history was one of starting with product-led growth. We didn't know anything about enterprise sales. I didn't know anything about enterprise sales. And so we put out a free product. This is back in 2016. And then 2017, one of our customers showed up and said, 'Hey, we really love Figma. We want to use Figma way more, but you're going to have to charge us.' And I'm like, 'That's wild.'
The customer wanted you to charge.
Yeah. They literally came to our office and said, 'Please charge. Otherwise, we cannot bet that you'll survive as a company.' You know, the kind of light bulb went off. I was like, guys, everybody, we got to charge, we got to charge money. So then we did. And then from there we started to hear more about the enterprise needs, everything from, you know, security, visibility, governance, and so on, and we started to build up towards the enterprise and learned about how that's different. And so we have these different layers that we've added over time, starting in 2017 all the way to today. And they change over time as the market does. But overall that's why we see everything from the individual freelancer or the student, because we're free for students. And some of the conversations I've had in India too are about how do we make sure we verify students, and I'm really excited to get more students in India using Figma because verification is actually a hard problem. But everything from a student or freelancer to the biggest enterprises, they're all using Figma. There's still more growth we can go, but also depth in the relationship we have.
