<div> </div><div><em><strong>Many startups were waking up to the importance of compliance, Umang Bedi of Adobe tells Businessworld's Vishal Krishna</strong></em></div><div> </div><div>Five years ago Adobe Systems products were the favourite pirated downloads in India. At the same time, there were so many startups that began using their products without really knowing that they were using pirated software. Next thing you know these startups had scaled up and were struggling to find the original version of the Adobe software. It's with these small businesses that the San Jose-based company wants to build a brand in India. It also wants to bet big on the smart city program where paperless government offices will become the norm, which will help citizens to use digital forms.</div><div> </div><div>Over the last year it has made efforts to connect with over tens of thousands small businesses to offer pricing that varies between Rs 60,118 per month for the whole creative cloud and Rs 15,990 per month for a single app for new customers. The pricing is substantially less for customers who are migrating to creative cloud.</div><div> </div><div>Five years ago, these small companies were subject to expensive enterprise licences. "This effort has made India the second largest market in the Asia region," says Umang Bedi, MD of Adobe Systems South Asia.</div><div> </div><div>He says that many startups were waking up to compliance and governance as a primary element in setting up businesses, which can help them raise private capital. Therefore it was easier for Adobe to get many more startups on board over the last 12 months.</div><div> </div><div>Adobe has also shut down its perpetual license business and has moved everything to a cloud-based business model, which charges customers based on the number of users.</div><div> </div><div>The company has also gone on to increase its enterprise business, in India, and has signed 500 term licences.</div><div> </div><div>Most of the large ad tech firms and ecommerce companies such as Flipkart use the marketing cloud to gain traction with customers. Umang adds that the marketing cloud was an important transformation piece for Adobe because it allowed digital companies to make, mobilize, manage, measure and monetise content.</div><div> </div><div>For its marketing cloud business it has the likes of Publicis, WPP and Sapient Nitro using the marketing cloud.</div><div> </div><div>"Software as a service is the preferred model today and all MNCs have already migrated to such a business model," says Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO of Greyhound Research.</div><div> </div><div>However, the Adobe India MD feels the government business has the potential to be the largest revenue earner because of the digital India and smart city programs.</div><div> </div><div>Adobe is already working on a program with the government where 28,000 villages can avail documentation services from a single source in a village. This is a paperless initiative run by the Central government. Adobe is also supporting 10 local languages that can be used by several education and government institutions. What remains to be seen is Adobe's foray in to setting up a program for startups, which others, such as Microsoft and Citrix, have already set up as accelerators.</div>
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