‘We See Opportunity In SMEs & Startups’

Kulmeet Bawa has recently taken over as the MD of Adobe South Asia. In this new role, Bawa is focusing on the Indian market and is trying to solve its unique challenges. In an interview with BW Businessworld’s Ayushman Baruah, Bawa talks about how India is one of the most strategic markets for the company globally, and adoption of Adobe Creative Cloud in India and the opportunity for startups.

Edited excerpts:

It’s mundane to ask if India is an important market for you because we all know it is. But, can you share your unique strategy for the Indian market and your growth metrics?
As the company is growing, Adobe India continues to see an exponential growth and it is in fact one of the most strategic markets for the company globally. A key differentiator for Adobe India is its contribution to the company’s intellectual property (IP) creation, and ensuring that an outstanding customer experience is delivered.

From a market opportunity stand-point, India is one of the fastest growing regions for Adobe across APAC. The success, we are experiencing in the Indian market, today is a testament to our strong presence in the country, and the exploding demand for digital experience solutions in India. Going ahead, our strategy will be to continue delivering for the market demand and building a strong platform to continue to support our customers in the Indian market.

Adobe’s cloud platforms are today powering the digital transformation wave across the world’s biggest brands, educational institutions and government agencies. This market demand has seen us achieving record quarterly revenue of $1.40 billion for the second quarter fiscal year 2016, representing year-on-year growth of 20 per cent.

What is the role of the India’s R&D centre? Does it play a support-oriented role, or does it take a lead role in terms of newer technologies and innovation?
Adobe India’s R&D centre is one of our largest setups across the globe, and over a third of Adobe’s overall research and development happens out of the India labs. The India R&D centre has a strategic importance for Adobe and it is an integral part of the organisation’s overall growth, and we continue to make significant investments in our setup here.

The Adobe India R&D centre contributes significantly in creating, developing and supporting products and innovations across Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud. In many aspects, our India R&D center has end-to-end ownership of the products or solutions, including requirements for research and development, testing, and even marketing of the product.

What is the adoption rate of Adobe Creative Cloud in India? Is creative cloud your fastest growing segment?
In the second quarter of the financial year 2016, our Digital Media segment reported $3.41 billion of annualised recurring revenue and a net increase of $285 million. We are seeing tremendous growth momentum for Creative Cloud in India as well. From inspiration to monetisation, Creative Cloud is the one-stop shop for creatives, and we are seeing strong market momentum across its offerings. We are migrating CS customers, expanding into new market segments, and launching new product and service innovations.

We are heavily focused on expanding the Creative Cloud portfolio with new innovations. Our goal is to make the creative process more fun, seamless and efficient for creatives, thus helping them to go from a blank page to a brilliant composition in record time. We recently announced a major Creative Cloud update that includes amazing new features in flagship applications like Content Aware Crop in Photoshop, performance enhancements in cross-product capabilities like Creative Sync, and a significant update to Adobe Stock, which now includes a premium collection of stock content and deeper integration within the CC desktop and mobile applications.

Given the growing number of startups, do you see SMBs offer a greater opportunity for Adobe in India than large enterprises?
Today, it is all about delivering compelling experiences for customers, and businesses of all sizes in India are realising the value from their investments in digital. As the market evolves and becomes increasingly competitive, small and big brands are shifting focus from customer acquisition to conversion and retention — and looking to partner with Adobe to drive business growth. India presents a lot of opportunity for startups and at Adobe. We are specifically seeing the SMB market segment embrace our technologies in a big way.

On the creative side, our Creative Cloud technologies are simple and ubiquitous, and well suited for SMB users. Since customers don’t need to buy a licence upfront and can simply add or upgrade as per their usage at the end of the year, we are very well positioned to suit the needs of SMBs.

On the Digital Marketing, we are seeing SMBs become early adopters of our optimisation solutions and realise immediate gratification and returns on their investments. Startups specifically are of a digital mindset and are keen to leverage analytics and optimisation tools towards driving their business strategies.

With our play on both, the art and science of digital experiences, going ahead, Adobe sees tremendous market opportunity in the SMB and startup community in India.

Which industry verticals are you targeting in India?
The Indian government’s focus on digitisation and the onset of programmes like ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ are further augmenting the increasingly digital mindset of organisations in the country. For instance, one such initiative is the government’s recent move to introduce e-KYC through digital authentication using Aadhaar cards. The government is also focusing on digitising land records and legal documents, and also making Smart Cities a reality — all of which opens up enormous opportunities for us to contribute.

Be it e-commerce, ITeS, retail, telecom, aviation, or travel and tourism — we are seeing businesses across sectors embrace our technologies and are optimistic about expanding our market presence in India. Two very fast-moving sectors, where we are seeing a lot of digital innovation, are Banking, Finance services and Insurance (BFSI) and Education.

Some of your flagship software products bear the brunt of huge piracy. How do you plan to combat that?
Piracy continues to plague the software industry, and technology companies world over have been driving their efforts to combat it. Adobe India is working closely with Business Software Alliance (BSA) to forge new partnerships between industry and the government in India to promote legal software use among public agencies and private enterprises. We have also moved away from the conventional boxed software licensing model and embraced the power of cloud computing in a big way, thus ensuring that customers across segments can use Adobe’s latest product innovations at very affordable prices.

With these measures, we are seeing a positive change in the market and observing customers realise the benefits of using genuine software. In 2009, the pirated software use was pegged at 65 per cent. According to BSA Global Software survey, use of pirated software has come down in India to about 58 per cent today. It is still very high, but in relative terms, it has come down drastically from what it was 10-15 years back. In last 5 years alone, the percentage has dropped as much as 7 per cent.

ayushman@businessworld.in;

@ayushmanb