Around the globe in 18 years!

Sunil Kripalani,
Global Sales and Marketing,
MicroWorld

eScan traces its roots in MicroWorld, which was founded by Govind Rammurthy in the year 1993 and has sealed its position in the antivirus front nationally as well as internationally. It is MicroWorld's endeavour to offer macro solutions when it comes to security threats in this hugely web-oriented era. 

Sunil Kripalani, Global Sales and Marketing at MicroWorld, said, “When we started, the Indian antivirus industry especially the SMB segment was not as evolved as it is today. Every assembler or every small system integrator (SI) was selling hardware with free antivirus. So, people were not ready to pay for antivirus. But we understood that the scenario internationally was completely different. This instigated us to focus on the international market. We then went ahead and started our company MicroWorld Technologies Inc. in the US. Subsequently, we started spreading our footprints in Germany, Malaysia and South Africa, penetrating the world market. And today, we have our presence in more than 90 countries and our software is available in more than 16 languages.” 

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How has been your journey in the Indian market?

Earlier, we were not very aggressive in the Indian market. We were not in marketing or brand building activities. Around three and a half years back, we started doing a lot of activities in India because we saw a huge change in the national market. People started using Internet to a large extent. Thus, Internet threats crept in and people realized the importance of antivirus and security. We have started building up the channel and channel confidence and today we have a very hard working and big team. 

Please throw some light on your various Channel-engagement initiatives?

Our biggest strength nationally and internationally is the technology and the second-biggest strength is the product customization as per the market needs. We are basically focussed on partner-driven sales. We are emphasizing a lot on adding more channel partners and resellers. We do innovative things for our partners and have also made the partner margins more attractive. Recently, we have rolled out 26-city roadshow to cover all the major towns of India, including metros, A-class and few B-class towns. 

To quote a classic example, in one of our initiatives last year, with the eScan customization kit, eScan Channel community could get customer protection by customizing eScan products with their email-ID, website and buy links. Standard builds of eScan products were available for download from www.escanav.com with a trial period of 30 days. Using eScan customization kit, the Channel community could offer their customers up to 90 days of trial. This customization option was well complimented by the eScan Affiliate programme. Being a member of the eScan Affiliate programme, the partner got his own eScan buy links that were easily integrated into the customized builds. This aimed to help eScan Channel community, who does not have their own website or payment gateway integration in their website, to safeguard and augment their business.

What do you think about the Indian customers?

Indian customers want more value for their money. Today, people are not content with vanilla antivirus. In fact, they want a suite at a cheaper price. We give more value for money to our customers. For instance, when we offer eScan antivirus, there is also a full firewall and anti- spam in it. 

What are your expansion plans? Any latest innovation you are planning?

The way we are accelerating, this year we should cross Rs.100 crore in India. For corporates and SMBs, we are launching eScan version 11 which has enhanced features and is extremely user friendly. 

We have also introduced eScan remote support for customers through which we can remotely connect to the customer's computer and provide support immediately. We will also be working shortly launching the eScan version for mobile phones, Mac systems and other Android-based devices.

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MicroWorld Winsock Layer (MWL) Technology developed by MicroWorld is an innovative technology which can work between the Winsock Layer and application layer. MWL allows MicroWorld products to stop unsafe content at the transport layer itself, before it enters the application layer, and thus protects Information Systems effectively. MicroWorld is the sole company to have developed MailScan for more than 32 different types of mail servers and is available on both Linux and Windows platforms. It also developed customized solutions for different kinds of mail servers. 

MicroWorld has more than 25 ISPs in Asia-Pacific alone, who are using and bundling eScan products with Internet connection. Amongst others, MicroWorld did OEM bundling with HP in Indonesia. HP had bundled eScan with their notebooks. MicroWorld has also started bundling with Acer in Taiwan and India. 

MicroWorld has also proved to be exceptionally beneficial to the national and the international channel vendors. With feature-packed innovations in its kitty, eScan's offerings attract channel vendors towards it like moths to a flame. The latest “eScan version 11” has additional superior features to make it more user friendly, different and innovative and also caters to partner's interest, wherein the partner margins have been made more attractive and excellent support is provided in branding activities.

Today, all the marketing and communication and branding activities worldwide happen in the name of eScan and  the company's focus does not only pertain to A class cities but delves into B, C and D class cities as well. There are over 4,000 active partners selling eScan all over India.  The company already has more than eight regional distributors in different pockets. The smaller partners are connected to the regional distributors. 

Understanding the diverse requirements of both the national and the international market, MicroWorld has devised completely different schemes for the channel associates. In India though, partners mostly get thrilled if they are flown out of the country. However, internationally the scenario is different. Partners abroad find it lucrative to get a free pack on the purchase of one or get more discount percentage on achieving a certain target. Also, they would like to have marketing budgets to strategize and execute their own marketing plans with the guidance and support from MicroWorld. But in India partners are more dependent on MicroWorld for marketing activities and require more handholding on the technical front. That is why MicroWorld deputes engineers for assisting the partners in understanding the products better and ensures that partners are comfortable while selling them. MicroWorld has over 90 engineers in different parts of the country, who give regular training to the dealers and distributors. 

About a year and a half back, MicroWorld started focussing on the retail market internationally. It joined hands with the local companies which were in retail business and granted them re-publishing rights. This was done to locally manufacture the boxes and supply it to large format retail outlets in their respective regions or area of operations. 

MicroWorld as an ISV (Independent Software Vendor) is part of the partner programme of major software and hardware giants, such as Microsoft, Intel, IBM Corporation, Citrix, Suse Linux and Red Hat, amongst others. It works in tandem with them to ensure that MicroWorld's products provide comprehensive protection to all systems running these platforms and solutions. 

MicroWorld has a range of OEM and customized Information Security solutions for companies interested in licensing its technologies. There are three types of OEM opportunities available for companies interested in becoming MicroWorld's OEM partners: Re-Branding, Co-Branding and Bundling. Some of the OEM partners include Hardware Manufacturers, Software Developers, UTM Vendors, Networking Vendors, Email Gateway and Proxy Server Manufacturers, Distributors and ISPs. Its Information Security technologies that include Parental Control, Endpoint Security and Content Security, cover a wide range of threats.

eScan's Parental Control is based on the MWL and DIRC technology, which provides total content security to its users by blocking access to websites which are offensive in nature and which may host malwares. With different profile options such as "Walled Garden", "Teenager", "Adolescent" and “Adult" covering age groups from 5 to 18 and above, users can customize web access options according to the situations confronted. Another unique feature is the detailed report which helps users to keep a tab on the sites that are visited by their kids along with the date and time. eScan Parental Control includes features such as real-time content scanning, password protection and time restrictions for internet usage. With time restrictions, parents can restrict their children from accessing adult websites and downloading any suspicious content which may contain malwares and even keep a tab on the time and date at the sites which were accessed.

MicroWorld is consistently and successfully delivering security solutions that one can rely on, by continuously improvising and innovating. The company's sincere efforts work towards minimizing the security pains across the verticals - be it the consumers, SoHo, SMBs, large enterprises or corporates.

For more contact:
beenish@varindia.com
with inputs from moumita@varindia.com