Having registered a 100 percent growth in India during FY'08-09, Gnatusin is upbeat about the market. He revealed that as part of its marketing strategy, Kaspersky will invest extensively in India and may look at appointing yet another national distributor to cater to the Indian customers

What are some of your plans for the Indian market?
Now that we have penetrated the Indian market successfully, we are looking at gradually hiking the prices of our products by not more than 10 percent in India. In addition, Kaspersky is looking at revamping our existing channel model and enhance focus on the business and corporate segment to ensure greater reach. By the end of October 2009, we will set-up a local sales and marketing team in addition to appointing technical staff. We will have a team of approximately 10 employees, including a channel manager for India. We have witnessed huge growth here and the FY'08-09 saw us registering almost 100 percent growth in India. Globally we grew 70 percent. We are now targeting the same growth figure for the coming financial year as far as India is concerned.

In June 2009, Kaspersky had hiked the prices of its products since a lot of Indian distributors were selling your products outside India. Have you been able to curb the practice?
We had taken a conscious decision of keeping our prices in India low when compared globally. This was done to penetrate the market. However, in June this year we did ask our national distributor to double the regional distributor prices of three users to Rs 752. This decision was taken in view of the fact that our three-user software was being sold by the Indian channels in large quantities outside India, including Middle East, Singapore, Europe among other markets, which in turn was affecting our business from these regions. Partners from India were reselling software products to distributors across other countries at lower prices, given that there is a wide gap between the India distribution price and the price that the vendor follows internationally. In order to curb the above practice, we have now started installing IP filtering technology in all our products. The IP filtering technology ensures that even if a global customer purchases the product in India or from an Indian channel partner, he will not be able to activate it and get updates.

Alexander Gnatusin Director-Channels, Kaspersky Lab

Will there be a further change in the pricing structure?
Now that we have established our footprint in India, we may look at hiking the prices of our products gradually. By 2010, there will be a further change in the pricing structure. While the MRP for end customers will remain the same, its only the market price or the market operating price that will go up. However, at the same time we don't intend to discourage our partners and hence we will introduce special bonus schemes simultaneously. This will ensure that our partners continue to enjoy the decent margin from the sale of our products.

Are you looking at revamping your distribution model?
We may bring about changes to our existing channel structure. In the beginning of next year, we may look at appointing yet another master (national) distributor in India. In addition we may also look at having state-wise distributors or have a model, wherein we will have separate distributors for corporate and retail segment.

How about plans around product product expansion?
We are closely observing the notebook penetration across the globe, and while most of our products are already in India, we might add some anti-virus Internet security product specially developed for the netbook range of products. Until recently, we had been concentrating on the retail segment in India but in the coming financial year, we will shift our focus towards business and corporate segment as well. This is in view of the fact that SMBs and SMEs have also started realizing the relevance of having a strong security solution to protect their businesses. Customers are now looking at securing their data, credit card related information in addition to saving themselves from web-based viruses.

What are some of your plans for your channel partners?
We are looking to differentiate ourselves from other vendors by way of providing high-quality products and ensuring high level of protection. As soon as we will have resurrected an office in India, a major portion of our revenues will be spent on brand building and marketing-related activities. We will provide all the required support to our partners and strengthen our relationship with them further.

POOJA SHARMA
poojas@cybermedia.co.in
Read full version of the interview at dqchannels.com

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