New Delhi, Dec 13 (IANS): Microsoft on Thursday announced that its enterprise social network app Kaizala is now helping over 1,000 government and private businesses in India improve workplace productivity and streamline growth.

The company also said it will expand the reach of Kaizala -- launched in India last year and now available in 18 languages across 28 markets in Asia, Middle East, Africa and South America -- to Office 365 commercial plans worldwide.

"Kaizala, with Cloud scale and enterprise security, is enabling organisations to achieve more by empowering employees, engaging customers and enhancing workplace productivity. We are delighted with the rapid adoption in just over a year," said Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India.

Developed by the Microsoft Garage team, Kaizala allows people to be connected in a group, create hierarchy-based access to a group and create groups within groups.

Microsoft also announced new features in Kaizala, like "Me Chat" and "Persistent Chat" along with video and voice calling and web app.

"Kaizala is a chat-based communication and data management tool. It is an enterprise ready, compliant and secure chat app, offering organisations easy and simple way to share data for insightful decision making and gives employees an easy-to-use solution for efficient collaboration and improved productivity," explained Rajiv Kumar, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft.

Backed by Microsoft's Azure platform, organisations like YES Bank, UPL, Alembic Pharmaceuticals, Shopper's Stop and Eureka Forbes are using the Kaizala app.

"Microsoft Kaizala serves as an Electronic Medical Record, with no attendant cost, and the patient's data is shared across the group of treating doctors and nurses," said Dr Devi Shetty, Founder and Chairman, Narayana Health who is one of the early adopters of Microsoft Kaizala.

"All group members monitor a patient's treatment and make interventions in real time," he added.

The customers are using Kaizala to bridge gap between employees, extended workforce and customers; share information among employees; collect data from the field through polls or surveys; track movement of first line workers; and get real-time analytics on integration with Office 365, said the company.

Earlier this year, Microsoft enabled digital payments services on Kaizala in India. The UPI payment integration on Microsoft Kaizala works with all the banks that are already participating in UPI.

Microsoft Kaizala is available as a free mobile app on Android, iOS and Windows platforms for individual users.