Thakkar firmly believes that SMB customers in India are willing to opt for a managed service model when it comes to security. This is why Syntesia recently discontinued its direct sales model and decided to work only with the channel

Can you shed some light on your security-on-demand model?
When I co-founded Syntesia in 2005, we saw a great potential in the SMB space with the way they were connected online. We also saw a big growth in Asia as well as in the managed security services. The best analogy to offer is that of people getting power supply or cable TV without buying the physical infrastructure or managing it.

Similarly we decided to offer a unified threat management (UTM) box to SMB customers where we will remotely manage everything. If customers wanted to configure their box directly, they could simply avail our managed services without buying our UTM device.

Why did you decide to go direct when you started your Indian operations?
When we started Syntesia we knew that the channel is in need of a matured product, which is well-known and has a good installed base. That is why we decided to first tap into market directly to create a good client base. This model helped us get direct customer feedback. In fact, it was based on this feedback that we even made a couple of changes to our products. For instance, we had a smaller box earlier because we thought that Indian SMBs did not have a lot of online traffic. But then we realized that this was not the case, we made the box bigger.

Why should SMB customers invest in UTM instead of standalone devices?
It does not make sense for enterprises to opt for UTM devices because their online traffic load and security needs are different, which could be better handled by a standalone device. But the basic needs of an SMB customer is firewall, anti-spam and anti-virus, which they can get from any UTM device. The other technologies like content filtering or VPN are add-ons.

We tell our SMB customers that they should not invest too much money in the device and opt for a subscription model where you pay monthly for all these above mentioned services. This frees their funds for other infrastructure acquisition.

What is the profile of the SMB customers you are targeting? What benefits does your solution provide them?
We are targeting SMBs with 25 plus users who normally do not have any servers but have desktops and laptops. Our entry level solution has an installation charge of about Rs 20,000 and with a monthly subscription fee of approximately Rs 2,500.

In that the customers get 24x7 support, configuration and free replacement if the box fails. This aside our partners can also earn from the services component of the business.

What is the channel network that you are trying to build?
Right now we are in talks with about 50 partners in East, West and North India, of which half have signed up with us and are maintaining inventory.

Did you know?

Kaushik Thakkar is also Executive VP-Strategic Sales and Alliance of Portwise Inc, which offers security solutions to enterprises He is an avid golfer, but in order to strike a balance with two work profiles and spending time with his family, he gave up golfing Now he unwinds by hitting the gym every morning He is a Bollywood buff and to ensure that he can catch the latest Hindi movie in the US, he has joined a DVD rental club, through which he watches four new movies a month. He catches up on more Hindi movies on the in-flight entertainment channels while flying down to India

Two years ago while we were selling direct, we started signing up channel partners and we had around 15 active partners. We stopped selling directly in the end of 2008. Now we will work with regional distributors like Sterling Infoways, Vora Brothers, SafeNet, etc who will then support an extended network of resellers. We are working with five regional distributors to see how we can target the market differently where we can cannibalize the existing channel which are selling our competition's brands

Since we were in the direct business we know the customer's need well. We now have to train our partners, get them to stock, put them in touch with customers and hand-hold them through the process initially so that everything goes smoothly.

Vinita Bhatia
vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in

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