MUMBAI: Canva is putting its product pipeline into fast-forward. As artificial intelligence compresses the time it takes for new capabilities to emerge, the design platform is moving away from traditional six-month development cycles and towards launching products and updates within weeks.
“We can’t release something every six months anymore,” Canva co-founder Cameron Adams told Moneycontrol, highlighting how quickly AI models and their capabilities are evolving.
The shift is particularly significant for India, now Canva’s fourth-largest market, where users created more than 1 billion designs over the past year. Indian users have also created more than 250 million videos on the platform.
Globally, Canva has more than 265 million users, including over 31 million paying subscribers. Adams said usage patterns in India are increasingly influencing the company’s product roadmap, particularly as AI becomes more deeply embedded in the platform.
One example is Canva Offline, launched in April following long-standing requests from Indian users. The feature allows people to work on Canva without an internet connection and has seen strong adoption among students and teachers in the country.
Then there is Canva Code 2.0, the company’s AI-powered tool for creating websites, interactive widgets and other digital experiences through prompts. Indian users are among its strongest adopters, with use cases ranging from educational activities and calculators to interactive menus and property listings.
Canva is also pushing further into India’s enterprise market. Adams said the company’s enterprise segment has grown 100 per cent over the past few years, making it a key area for future expansion.
The company’s India team has also tripled in size over the last two years, reflecting the growing importance of the market to Canva’s global operations.
But faster AI adoption is creating a new question for Canva: how to charge for all that extra intelligence.
The company continues to offer its subscription plans but has introduced Canva AI Pass for users who need significantly more AI capacity than their existing plans provide. Customers exceeding the AI limits included in their subscriptions can purchase additional usage.
The pricing equation is also becoming a consideration for enterprise customers. Adams said businesses are increasingly weighing the cost of high-volume AI usage against the value those tools generate.
For Canva, therefore, AI is changing more than what users can create. It is also changing how quickly the company builds, how India influences its roadmap and how the platform monetises its growing appetite for AI.
