No Layoffs, Says Netskope India MD As Company Opens New B’lore Office
US-based cybersecurity company Netskope has established a new office in Bangalore to accommodate its local team which has more than doubled in size since January 2021.
During a media roundtable on Thursday, Netskope India MD Alok Kothari said while sections of the industry have seen layoffs, the Santa Clara, California-headquartered company had not looked at layoffs. He emphasised that the company continues to hire at the same rate as in the past few years and has not seen any slowdown in recruitment.
Netskope’s India headcount is close to 600, out of which over 400 employees are engineers. About 50 per cent of all workforce at Netskope works in R&D and a significant part of this effort is led from India.
“Since day one, India has sat at the very core of Netskope’s DNA, and it is great to witness how innovation that originates from this country can go on to change the way organisations around the world secure data. We hold more than 100 issued US patents, and a third of those awarded in 2022 include named involvement of our Indian engineers,” Kothari said.
The company’s India team was responsible for 28 out of overall 78 patents from Netskope in 2022.
“Some of the most recent patents awarded relate to Netskope’s AI advances, demonstrating that India’s engineers are operating at the forefront of global innovation and working on the most important technology trends,” Kothari added.
Besides engineers, the new Bangalore office will also host Netskope’s local go-to-market team, which has seen significant success during the five years it has pursued local sales in India.
Commenting on APAC and hiring spotlight on India, Tony Burnside, VP and Head of APAC, Netskope said, “If we were to hire three people in total, two would be from India and one from somewhere else.”
In the last financial year, Netskope said it has seen solid growth from new and existing customers, driven by a go-to-market strategy focused on a network of tech partners and resellers with footprints in networking and security transformation projects. Three of India’s four largest manufacturers and five of the ten largest e-commerce players in the region rely on Netskope for cloud security and data protection.
Earlier in 2023, Netskope raised USD 401 million in an oversubscribed financing round which was led by Morgan Stanley Tactical Value, with participation from CPP Investments, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. The company has more than 2,400 customers worldwide and competes with the likes of Cisco, IBM, Zscaler and Okta in the SASE market which could potentially be a USD 36 billion market by 2025.
“Despite the fact our Indian sales operations only started five years ago, we have become quickly embedded in the technology estate of both private and public organisations in the region, helping them to navigate emerging business trends such as hybrid work and enabling them to stay ahead of security concerns exacerbated by broader geopolitical and cyberwarfare dynamics,” Kothari said.
Lately, Netskope is seeing a lot of interest coming in from government agencies and expects it to be a big vertical for its business in India.
