Having signed up with Milestone Interactive Services as their master distributor, Baxter shares his aggressive plans to recruit 1,000 resellers by the end of 2010

Why did you enter the Indian market by offering a free antivirus (AV) rather than a shrink wrapped product?
About a year ago we started to look at other geographies other than the ones where we were already strong. When we did our initial piece of work, we looked at the installed base of AVG products which was exceptionally strong in India. This was despite the fact that we did not have a direct presence or have a presence through a distributor or reseller.

We also looked at the digital landscape of the country. The amount of users who are accessing the Internet today in India is around 13 million, which is close to 1,000 percent growth since 2000. This is predicted to hit 15 million in another two years. This sealed our decision to enter India.

From the company's strategy perspective, we launched free sites as one of roads to market. Our plan for India is to look at multiple roads to market. We will continue to have security solutions which will help us grow the volume of customer coverage and brand exposure.

This aside, we will also have an offline business model for which we have signed up with our master distributor Milestone Interactive Group who are responsible for signing up resellers, retailers and channel to further position our physical and electronic solutions.

We are having a two pronged attacks-online and offline-based on free and paid solutions. It's the classic style of how AVG enters a market and is more than just our free mechanism.

Why are you tapping only the Indian SOHO and SMB customers rather than the enterprise clientele?
Our products are exceptionally strong in the SOHO and SMB markets. We also have our commercial product line-up. We have multiple installations around the world which have several thousand seats. But that is not what our core business is going to be.

At the same time, our master distributors will be working with many resellers. Some of these resellers will be committed to SOHO market, while some will be committed to enterprise customers.

So technically, we operate exceptionally well on the enterprise front. If our partners want to drive enterprise business then we have the technology to support that. But first and foremost, we are an SMB and SOHO focused organization.

Which are the commercial products that you will be introducing in India?
From an offline perspective, Milestone can sell the entire suite of products, which includes AVG Internet security and identity protection. They can also sell the SMB range of products.

We want to keep our product range simple for our partners rather than having too many SKUs. We want it to stay limited to AV and ID security, whether it's from the consumer or the commercial perspective. Our reseller base will have the opportunity from our entire product range.

How will you position your products in face of the stiff competition?
We have groundbreaking technology in AV Internet security and ID protection solution. We are concentrating on having an effective solution which will have minimal effect on the PC, so that it does not slow down the machine. This is the genesis of our tag line 'Hard on threats, easy on you'. We want to make it exceptionally easy to use for our customers, which is why we invest heavily in R&D. We are also letting all our partners know that their customers will be supported very well with our support team, either through phone or e-mail.

This apart, we are investing heavily in channel programs to have huge coverage amongst them as they can drive value to AVG. We want to be known for our premium products, which are price effective. Our products have also won awards from consumer and SOHO marketplace, and we will drive that messaging hard as well.

Given that Milestone works with over 1,200 retail stores, does this mean that AVG too will be targeting the retail customers initially for its shrink wrapped products?
Milestone's forte is the retail space including large format retailers (LFR) and we will leverage on that as part of our growth plan. The second plan is of driving system integrator acquisition through Milestone, which has a target of recruiting 1,000 resellers by 2010 end.

We will also introduce some strong reseller programs, which will deliver high net profit contribution to our partners. These programs will be owned and managed by Milestone later this year.

Vinita Bhatia
vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in

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