With its piracy rates touching the 95% mark in India, software major Adobe is already engaged in a 'price-differential pilot' in the Chinese region and would seriously look at introducing the same in India, after evaluating the results in China. 

“China is even worse than India. Piracy rates of our software are touching the 98% mark over there. In order to curb that, sometime back, we started this pilot of price-differential in China. Though, I would not be able to divulge any detail on this, we would certainly look at introducing the same in India after evaluating the results in China,” explained Naresh Chand Gupta, Senior VP, Adobe Systems.

While the overall piracy figure India hovers at the 74% mark, for Adobe products the figure is around 90% to 95%. In countries like India and China most of the piracy is often fanned by the price-differential factor. 

Even after working closely with Nasscom and BSA for quite some time, companies like Adobe and Microsoft have not been able to control piracy in this part of the world. However, Adobe feels positive about things after actively going after the piracy menace. 

“India does not contribute much in terms of sales revenues for us. But still if we are able to bring down the piracy level from a present 90% mark to 80%, we would surely be doubling the revenues coming from India,” he added. 

Experts in the industry opine that introduction of price-differential in this market is a good way of tackling piracy as most of the end-customers do not have the proper knowledge about the difference in original and pirated products. 

“These customers do look at price very seriously. So if a customer is getting good and genuine product at a consciously reduced Price – than things will surely improve on the piracy front,” added a big software reseller from New Delhi on conditions of anonymity.

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