Channel partners driving business growth for Kaspersky

In an exclusive interaction with VARINDIA, Shrenik Bhayani- General Manager, South Asia, Kaspersky Lab discusses on the brand’s R&D investment, growth, strategy and much more…..

With IoT gaining momentum and becoming a reality, a lot of connected devices have become more prone to cyber attacks. Commenting on the current trends in the Indian security landscape, Shrenik says, “As per our 2018 analysis, the number of malware that is detected every day is close to around 310k. 20 years back, this figure corresponded to the number of malware detected in a year.”

This increase in attacks has led to the rise in the number of security offerings from various companies, which is further leading to a stiff competition among the vendors.When asked about how Kaspersky tries to be at the cutting edge, Shrenik states, “I and my team’s position with the customer is that we are a company that can be a part of your process; we have offerings which will complement your environment. It doesn’t matter if you have a Symantec endpoint solution or MacAfee endpoint solution. We want to bring some value to the overall process that you have for your organisation in terms of ensuring that you are securing your company. So, this opens a lot of doors for us in terms of what we want to convey and If I would potentially go and talk to them and say that – ‘ok I am here to tell you that we are the best antivirus on endpoints’, and then customer will say – ‘it’s fine I already have something deployed and I am happy with it, why should I change it?’ So, the messaging which I and my team take to the market, to the partners and customers, is how we can be a part of your journey and you pick and choose where you think we are relevant to you and then we deliver it via our partners.”

R&D and Stratagems...

Talking on its go to market strategy, Shrenik comments, “Kaspersky Lab has always been a channel partner-centric company in India; it is because of our channel partners that we have been growing year on year. Our go to market strategy also involves activities with our channel partners, more frequent meetings with them, channel partner trainings and giving an equal growth to our B2B part of the business.”

Speaking on the significance of R&D, Shrenik tells, “R&D is one of the most important piece for Kaspersky. I believe it’s the strong pillar on which our organisation is currently standing, becauseif these guys don’t deliver quality stuff then eventually we can’t have the right products and right services in the market.  There is a specific percentage of Investments that go into R&D every year for the organisation, out of the total turnover. We have a framework on how much we invest into R&D.”

The number of Kaspersky Lab employees rose by 6.5% in 2017 to more than 3,800 professionals worldwide; the R&D department grew by 12% to about 1600 people.When asked about the plan to add R&D department in its newly launched office in Mumbai, he says, “We don’t have an R&D unit in our Mumbai office, but basis the country’s potential and the way the business is shaping up for us we have a concept of what we call as a great team which is nothing but our resource, which is apart of the R&D. They participate in industry forums, industry seminars, talk to government agencies, nodal agencies and can bring the perspective on what is happening in the whole R&D department and the value that we can bring to those agencies and so on so forth.  So, our plan is to have someone in the team in Mumbai office in 2019. It is under discussion and under review if business grows enough in 2018.”

Further commenting on the business’ growth he asserts, “We grew our business last year in 2017. From an India or South Asia specific standpoint, we were at a flat growth. One of the reasons of this flat growth was also around how we have structured our B2B business. In the last quarter of our business, which is Q4 in 2017, we delivered to our commitmentof delivering 105% growth, which is very close to the target we set in Q1 2018. The way we are growing and the waywe forecast for the rest of 2018, we will grow almost around 12%. This is obviously one specific aspect in mind that we are doing a major correction on how we have to handle our B2C inventory, so that we will slow down on our selling to the distributor in this segment. But that doesn’t mean we will stop selling more to the market. So, it’s about taking the right position on ensuring that our distributor also is not overburdened and at the same time we do the business in the best possible way, where we drive the demand and the market on the specific portfolios that we want to sell. Overall we will grow in our South Asia business by 10%,” he concludes. 

Abha Singh 
abha@varindia.com