8 Faces of Indian IT

8 Faces of Indian IT: Channel Heads of top Vendors who contribute 80% to the overall market

They have powers, they can lead you to the peak, and they are called Channel Heads. No company can flourish without them. We here present eight super channel heads of India who are dedicated to transform lives of consumers and giving them more freedom to live a better life. There is no comparison scale for them; you can give your own ratings.

Boss No.1 :  Anil Sethi, Dell-EMC

In Hindi there is a common parlance Bada hai to behtar hai -- that’s a line that suits to a tee the newly integrated Dell-EMC entity in 2017.

2016 witnessed the biggest merger in the tech industry history—again in Hindi parlance, the Dell-EMC Milan. If the marriage happened in 2016, it is being successfully consummated in 2017. Integration done, structure changed, roles redefined—the new Dell-EMC entity, like everwhere else in the world, is ready to run now in India.

The jumbo combo of Dell-EMC with 4000 partners base in India, now has the ability to deal with each and every type of IT needs of consumers and partners. The overall product and solutions portfolio has enlarged and as a consequence the channel is more prominent now.

Following the announcement, Anil Sethi is the leading name for Channel on the Dell-EMC block;  reporting into the Tian Beng Ng, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Channels Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), Dell EMC. From February 6 onward, Dell-EMC officially functions as the new entity.

Commenting on the merger, Sethi said, “It’s the biggest merger in the history of the IT Industry. And the biggest advantage of this merger is that the entire product portfolio is strong and most of the products are number one in their respective categories. Not a single OEM other than Dell possesses this. For a customer, it’s a win-win situation, as it will ease his buying process.”

With the level of partner integration Dell and EMC has had to deal with in the last few months, it was supposed to be a big maddening affair; however, contrary to expectations, it seems that everything has been peacefully done under the supervision of Sethi. “There is huge excitement and enthusiasm amongst the partner fraternity with this new environment. Our partners are all charged up. We were thinking that integration would be a concern but I am getting all good feedback from partners. Our new year will begin on February 6, and new partner programs will weave them together and it will be a big advantage to them.”

The new entity brings new roles and structure with the company segmenting markets into two parts. The Commercial segment is headed by Alok Ohrie (the erstwhile head of EMC India) and the enterprise segment is headed by Rajesh Janey (the erstwhile head of EMC India).  There is a common channel team, headed by Anil Sethi, which will pitch into both segments. Dell-EMC has a separate organization called CSB, i.e Client Solution Business, where the entire consumer line of products is handled under the leadership of P. Krishna Kumar.

Praveen Sahai, earlier heading channels for EMC India, now moves into an APAC based partner management role. Sahai will play a crucial role in growing and driving Dell-EMC's channel partner, distribution and systems integrators strategy by deepening current partnerships as well as creating new partnerships in the region.

There are few points where Dell-EMC will be focusing on post February 6: distribution channel, service to large accounts, and developing market and acquiring new partners.

Dell-EMC has a huge partner base which is categorized into metal partners; Titanium Black (elite partners only), Titanium, Platinum and Gold. And t

his entire ecosystem is called the partner led organization.

Dell-EMC has also introduced a new category of four national account channel managers who will be handling top platinum partners and leading different regional managers and partners in the country. “Partner led organization will be handling our metal partners. Also, it will be supporting enterprise and commercial businesses. We have opened our entire market to channels; they can go and do business in any space they want.” informed Sethi.

Though Dell-EMC right now covers the entire country, in the upcoming days there will be a further geo expansion plan rolling out too.

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No Handicap in IT: Gurpreet Brar, HP Inc.

As technology is shifting rapidly, PC Industry is witnessing margin pressure and threat largely from smartphones, HP Inc. is consistently innovating new products. This is just one thing a successful organization has, a backbone, called channel organization.

Gurpreet Brar is the man behind HP Inc’s. Channel Management in India. A veteran in channel sales, Gurpreet Brar is currently the Director, SMB and Commercial Channel at the Printing and Personal Systems Group (PPS) at HP Inc. India. He has the country wide responsibility for strategizing, planning and expanding the SMB in the company and managing the commercial channel. Under his aegis, HP has built the largest partner network in India to offer innovative products and solutions in every nook and corner of the country.

Post the split with HPE, HP Inc. has focused on reinventing itself. HP offers the best-in-class commercial print and personal computing devices which have been introduced precisely to meet the evolving needs of the customers. IDC numbers endorse company’s leadership in the PC and print business. With a focus on Government initiatives like Digital India, the company is working towards bridging the digital divide in the country. For 2016, the game plan was to enable the team and to get ready for the opportunities. In fact, HP Inc. has cracked several large-scale government deals last year. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan are some of the main names in the list. In Q3, HP Inc. won the UP tender for 1.45K laptops. “We are really seeing growth in government projects, for example, GST and CBEC. We had fairly good visibility around government initiatives. Our game plan was built around that.” HP is ensuring sustained growth for its partners focusing on the three key pillars of simplicity, innovation and profitability.

Nowadays, Government is investing in smart solutions for different verticals. So, for robust growth in government led projects, HP Inc. channel team has been designed in a way to give consumers the whole package. “There is a pre-sales team and a solution team, to go to large customers with the solution driven products. For 2017, there are lot of government projects in pipeline and hopefully 2017 will be a lot better than 2016,” said Brar.

Given the constant need to drive profitable revenue while ensuring customer and partner satisfaction, HP Inc. has decided to focus on increasing their reach. For this in 2016, the company has activated calling centers with vernacular expertise. Partners have also been engaged in a new business program to generate business in beyond their territory, in turn they were facilitated with extra rebates.

Furthermore, the acquisition of Samsung Printer Business has also given a boost to HP Inc.’s printer division. “A3 is a big portfolio that has come up now, there is an additional revenue sweep our partners can build up, and so we are building up A3 channel as well. It offers not only reach but profitability also. A3 model is built up around product and good service ecosystem which offers good margin”, commented Brar. HP has developed a winning strategy for the A3 market that brings together a laser focus on the needs of reseller partners and HP’s strength as a technology innovator and global print leader.

On profitability side, HP Inc. restructured the channel part. “What we did is we restructured our RD model in run rate business to retain margins. We ensured to make exclusive category based RD in a particular region. The objective of this exercise was marginal retention for the partners. While these RDs have a system (which is outsourced) to report internally and they could be benefited via rebate programs. Even T3 partners are also included in this”, informed Gurpreet Brar.

There is another program from HP Inc. called Achieve+ which is for partner representatives. Moreover, for ease of doing business HP Inc. has done several initiations like page wide demo. The company has hired an agency in top six metro cities which will assist partners and customers and provide them demos. Also, there is a toll free number which will cater to various queries.

DaaS is another area, where HP Inc. is tightening its thread. Large accounts like HPFS are there, it is a challenge for HP Inc. to grab interest of mid markets which will be a focus area in 2017. There are other focus areas like IT services to SMEs, cloud services which the company is looking upon. The company plans to continue to grow the business while helping partners to scale and adapt in this dynamic market.

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IT’s Pretty Face: Daisy Chittilapilly, Cisco India

A research says, men and women are equal to lead in the business world. It is true, even our common sense cannot deny it. Women are even good for business. There are also evident benefits of having more female leaders, according to respondents. Even Cisco knows it better, that’s why Daisy Chittilapilly is the name for partner organization in India and SAARC. She is the only woman in this club. So in the future we will expect more women channel heads. With more than 20 years of experience, her role is to built and evolve Cisco’s partner base, and work with team to direct

investments at right market opportunities.

India is one of the fastest growing markets for Cisco India. The company is also investing about $1.8 billion a year to fund its research here and pay for its 30,000-odd employees that include about 18,000 contract employees working with IT services companies such as TCS and Infosys.

Cisco has also seen a lot of early success in the smart city arena by winning projects in over a dozen cities, including Jaipur, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Lucknow, Nagpur, GIFT city. Talking about this Daisy says, “From India standpoint, from 12 to 18 months Cisco is totally focused on Digital India. Cisco is highly into government’s Skill India, Digital India, Start-up India, Make in India and Cyber-Security. It also gives us opportunity to new public partnerships and to establish in country. And now with manufacturing, we have set up a manufacturing unit in Pune but over time we would love to use it as a hub to deliver products in other countries as well.” Daisy also emphasized that Jaipur edition has gone to phase 2, and phase 3 is also initiated into talks.

Cisco is basically transitioning itself from traditional hardware manufacturer to software based systems and services. The company recently launched a Cisco Cyber Range Lab at its Gurugram facility which will provide specialized technical training workshops to help security staff build the skills and experience necessary to combat new-age cyber threats.

India is the third largest destination for start-ups, therefore, Cisco has also a ‘Launchpad’ accelerator program which will help start-ups, their authorized channel partners and developers scale their solutions, address new markets and build digital businesses. “For initiative like Start-up India, ecosystem is necessary, and there are opportunities to digitize the ecosystem, therefore, start-ups are very critical.” Said Daisy.

Under this 4-month program, at least 200 applicants were registered and only 8 were finalized as the first batch which has graduated. Cisco teams, including Daisy, are mentoring start-ups and developers on how to help in creating digital solutions to enable enterprise customers, service providers and other enablers in the public and private sphere.

Cisco Channel Organization is mainly focused on these aspects: diversification, distribution, ISVs, start-ups and developer community. “94% of our revenue comes from channel led motion. It’s equally important that channel fraternity should also transition along with the company.” Daisy concludes, “As we are transitioning, channel is also changing. Cisco is focused on diversifying their business from building it around software and solutions service. We always were a company which invest a lot in channel enablement so we are retraining them and investing lots of resources

onto them.”

It seems Cisco was unaffected by demonetization. Recently, Cisco’s India profit grew 340% in FY 2016 supported by smart-city deployments and partnership with Reliance Jio. Meanwhile, it is also into GST projects, railway modernization and telecom projects.

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Passionate Techie: Mukul Mathur, IBM India

“Digital is the wire, but digital intelligence, or artificial intelligence as some people call it, is about much more than that. This next decade is about how you combine those and become a cognitive business. It is the dawn of a new era.” With these words of Virginia M. Rometty, CEO, IBM; IBM is constantly evolving to align with new business models and technology. With these changes, channel structure of IBM is also transforming.

Mukul Mathur, Vice President, Global Business Partners and System Integrators at IBM India and South Asia says, “Industry, marketplace, channel landscape and IBM is going through a rapid transformation to align to new technology models that clients and new companies are expecting for their businesses. IBM India is pretty much into it and is changing internally as well as externally. We are helping our clients and channel ecosystem to go through digital transformation. We have seen tremendous success over last two years in nature of solutions and work partners are providing, as they are more appropriate in Digital India”.

IBM is watching the market closely for what is new in business world. According to Mathur, the trends which are occurring in channel organization are: firstly, channel partners are modifying their orientation and business structure. Lots of partners are moving their solutions towards cloud, SaaS, analytics, cognitive offerings like Watson, storage and data etc. They are basically rebuilding or enhancing their value proposition across the new era.

Secondly, channel partners are also bringing in lot of innovations around the business models that they can take to the customers. “Partners are trying to offer and engaging client, whether it is consumption based model or a cloud SaaS type model, they try to deploy and test quickly. There are partners who have commerce portfolio, and now delivering outcome based marketing activities rather than trying to sell hardware or software, they have completely oriented their solutions to deliver outcome,” says Mukul.

While thirdly, traditional channel partners are more like a reseller who are also re-growing skills. “IBM is trying to build a channel which is value solution based and that require different skills. Many partners are building those skills and changing.” He added further.

In this whole transformation exercise, IBM has added a new set of partners with new capabilities and is solution oriented. Right now, IBM partner base consist of cloud and cognitive based partners, start-ups, ISVs etc. which are categorized based on a system. “For us, a business partner is a customer. Different partners have different requirements so, very large system integrators are handled by a team which in turn supports them across the full dimensions of organization. Also our partners are getting full support in terms of technical skills and capabilities because that’s where the biggest disruption is happening. IBM works with thousands of business partners who are not just resellers anymore, but are developing solutions based on IBM technology.” He said. IBM India is also investing its resources into start-ups and developer community. The numbers of ISVs, MSPs, and system integrators who are creating new solutions for clients based on IBM technology is doubling year over year.

The partners fall into categories based on pre-fixed criteria that include business volumes, references and the skills. A structured skilling program is offered to the partners such as PartnerWorld program which has further categorized partners into Silver Gold and Platinum groups. “We are looking at people who constantly create new opportunities designed to help grow the business and drive increased profits.” Said Mukul Mathur.

IBM Customer Wins in 2016: A summary

 Godrej Interio: Godrej Interio will be collaborating with IBM to capture the attention of the growing number of home furniture and accessories consumers.

 YES Bank: YES Bank adopted IBM blockchain and Watson Conversation, delivered over the cloud platform to fully digitize vendor transactions and raise the level of the digital experience of its customers.

Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFC Limited): In December 2016, DHFC and IBM announced a customer partnership. A combination of on and off – premise cloud infrastructure and IBM Watson delivered over the cloud helped DHLF meet both internal and external business requirements.

Aegon Life Insurance: Aegon signed a 5-year agreement for a hybrid cloud solution hosted on IBM data center in Mumbai and Chennai. The partnership was to help Aegon build business resiliency and have access to an IT infrastructure to meet the growing needs of the company’s clients.

 The Mahindra Group: The company partnered with IBM for a cloud based custom blockchain solution to provide a secure financial transaction platform for suppliers and manufacturers.

Max Healthcare: IBM announced on November 22, 2016 that Max Healthcare, India’s leading hospital chain, has selected IBM’s Mobile Client Care Solution to transform and personalize their IT infrastructure into an intelligent, scalable and secure environment.

Prana Studios: IBM announced on November 2, 2016 that Prana Studios, a leading 3D animation and visual effects studio, has selected IBM Cloud to run new high resolution rendering jobs that are required to create high-quality visual effects.

Collaboration with Tamil Nadu Government: Southern Indian state and IBM build new emergency command center using IBM Cloud, analytics and The Weather Company data services to help government agencies rapidly prepare for – and respond to – extreme weather events.

IndusInd Bank:  IBM announced in August that IndusInd Bank will use IBM's Cloud commerce solutions to transform customer engagements and enhance its cross-sell platforms, in line with the bank’s strategy.

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Mythology Loving Sentinel: Ganesan Arumugam, Symantec India

With selloff of Veritas and acquisition of Blue Coat, Symantec is totally dedicated for the future of cyber-security in India. After the acquisition of Blue Coat, it recently held its first partner conclave in APJ region with the aim to excite and engage its partner community about a new era for Symantec.

Ganesan Arumugam is a Director-Partner and Commercial Sales for Symantec in India. He joined Symantec in 2015. According to Ganesan, “2016 was a great year, especially last quarter, thanks to increased awareness on the security of our customers across the country as various types of threats are coming up. Customers are now aware of their impacts and security solutions they need to implement.”

Cyber-security is now one of main verticals of technology today. Look back at 2016, it was year of cyber breach, twitter account hacked, health data being stolen and even credit cards being compromised too. Therefore, this branch is lime lighted and different verticals have main agenda in their checklist to ensure security in the organization. “2016 witnessed many attacks. There were multiple level of cracks, which were targeted ransomware attacks. Now that awareness has been spread, there is great demand of Symantec services and solutions, as different verticals got aware, especially banking sector and government sector. Last year was great year for us, as it came up with many opportunities and there was growth in business.” Commented Ganesan.

Symantec has huge base of channel partners in India. Company is dedicated to maintain a strong rapport with them through many exercises. Ganesan believes that partners are the connecting link between service provider and customers here emphasize how Symantec is working for partner enablement. He said, “Partner wants three things, demand for the product, better business and good rebate with extra money. Last year, we have launched a new partner program; it was welcomed by all our partners. The program Secure One was simple, it formulates competency and certification was easy. Also, we have done lots of enablement program so they could make more money. I will also add here, in 2016 we have gain great interest through the channel per se.”

“Our partners play a critical role in driving business success and contributing positively to customers across the country. As a total security solution provider, we are keen to build more security solutions so that partners will have broader spectrum of products to offer to the customers.” He added.

Symantec deals with all security solutions and this helps partners to stay focused on one vendor. According to Ganesan, “We are the only company which offers almost all security solutions per our customer needs. We are also focusing on cloud security. It gives the confidence to partners to do business with us.”

Out of more than 200 partners, most of them are small transactional, while other are large which are called managed or focused partners. “We have 20+ focused partners as they give multiple transaction and business in a quarter.  They are 24 by 7 security focused channel partners.” Said Ganesan. Meanwhile, there are channel programs going on. Blue Coat partner integration into Symantec is going on, while product integration is happening too. A new partner program will also starts from April 1, 2017 for new channel base.

What for 2017 in it, Ganesan told us, “Momentum has been built up at the end of 2016. We have fantastic pipeline and lots of projects are going on whether it is smart city or government or banking sector.”

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On Cloud Nine: Joybrata Mukherjee, HPE India

Joybrata Mukherjee is the new Channel Chief as the India leader for the Channels, SMB and Service Provider at HPE India. This role was earlier handled by Barun Lala. 

Nowadays, partners are not just a mere sales enablers, they are bringing up new opportunities and business for a company. Partners now know the various critical applications, business objectives and cost benefits so that they can build the best architecture and strategies for organizations. Joybrata said explaining the channel structure for HPE India, “80% of HPE India business is through indirect channel. We have 350 active channel partners in the country categorized into various status and certification. There are 15 platinum partners about 45 gold partners and 100+ silver partners. Apart from that, we have 150 emerging partners who are managed between our tier 1 cities partner. We also have dedicated team for smaller partners who are focused towards micro verticals solutions.”

HPE India is also focusing on SMBs. Partners align with micro vertical addresses HANA based solutions, small banks, telco based solutions etc. Company GTM strategy is to divide its partners on vertical basis. “Manufacturing, banking and finance, telco, and public sector, our partners are around these four major verticals, whereas micro vertical solutions are for smaller partners.” Said Joybrata.

HPE India partner strategy is driven by partner ready framework. Under this framework, company is following four initiatives for 2017. “HPE have decided that transformation, hybrid cloud, on-prem data center, Aruba strategy and empowering end users, these are the areas around which partner community will thrive.” Explained Mukherjee.

Along with a framework Joybrata talked about six competency areas for partners in country. These areas of competency are: application development and transformation; IT automation and office services; security management; overall management and infrastructure; edge and mobility. “This exercise is on the track and soon to be rolled out. This is for partners who are certified in 2 or 3 areas. On the basis of the competency they will be framed,” he added.

Earlier, there was a demarcation between Aruba partners and HPE partners. “The line has been erased. All partners are now trained on Aruba and are selling it. It is going very well and we are getting good number of growth.”

More importantly, ease of doing business is the target for company. “Last year, for partners we have started an automated online registration system-Be Aware. We want the process to be very easy, they could calculate compensation. Completely all our partners are covered under this framework. It eases the process of dealing.”

HPE India is also investing its resources in making partner aware, enabling them from different aspects, training them. “We enhance their skills, make them ready by the time our product is ready to go in hands of end user. We also have centralized resource solution architect center based in Mumbai. They are the bunch of people dedicated for partner community 24*7 online.”

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Tech Lover: Amit Kumar, Microsoft

Indians love technology, so does Microsoft India. Microsoft India is dedicated to empower people, businesses and society in country. Solving problems digitally is what Microsoft does. Describing India as a great market, Channel Head Amit Kumar talks about vision and channel organization of company. “Indian market is booming with SMBs and entrepreneurship. Secondly, government is also pushing initiatives like digital transformation, so there is lots of scope for us. People are solving real business solutions through our technologies.” Said Amit Kumar. He leads Microsoft's Small and Medium Solutions and Partners Segment in India. He is responsible for overall revenue and business strategy.

“Microsoft has always been a partner-led company and will continue to be so. We only think with partners. It’s also a way of life at Microsoft. Microsoft currently works with 10,000 partners across India. Our partner ecosystem is the backbone of our success and plays a key role in helping our customers in their journey of digital transformation.” Express Amit.

Microsoft is looking for newer possibilities this year, “2017 is full of opportunities, SMBs are growing, there is a huge opportunity in the market due to love of technology, and digital transition is going on and fact that Microsoft has right solutions and focus areas, and we have very strong and vibrant partner ecosystem. This combo gives us huge package of opportunities.” Said Amit.

Partner organization in Microsoft is based on nature of services offered. “Talking about partner ecosystem, it’s a framework which is evolving; it’s like a four step process.” Said Amit.

Partners that resell to customers– These range from OEM partners and retail partners to small businesses that sell to other businesses.

Project services partners – These partners engage with the customer for specific projects. These could be the traditional systems integrators or then partners like KPMG who would engage at a business level or a technology level.

Managed services partners – These partners deliver a huge range of services – hosting, outsourced services, ISP services, telecom services, etc. Within these, there are also partners who are front-ending a set of cloud services and have no infrastructure of their own but manage IT on behalf of their customer.

Partners delivering IP services- They either have fully packaged products, like ISVs or they have a cyclical set of delivery or solution. In the latter case, their IP is on the delivery methodology or the delivery solution.

“Idea of this framework is not classifying partners, it is a journey. However, internal categorization is based on what partners do for customers and not just what kind of problems they solve for customers.” Said Amit.

Microsoft provides the technologies and tools to enable enterprises to embrace a cloud culture. “Business is shifting towards cloud. My job is to build best cloud sales team, not just in Microsoft but with our partners too. The concept of cloud business is not in isolation in Microsoft itself, it includes our partners as part of strategy. We also learn from our partners. It’s a two way process.” Amit said. Microsoft tries to modernize partner style of working, enable them through the digital transformation.

As one of the largest cloud operators in the world, Microsoft has invested more than $15 billion in building a resilient cloud infrastructure and cloud services that deliver higher availability and security, while lowering overall costs. Microsoft cloud infrastructure currently includes more than 100 data centers located in over 40 countries, and the company is continuing to rapidly build capacity to serve customers worldwide.

Strategic alliance to empower India’s Digital Transformation

PwC has also joined Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Program which will enable them to provide their advisory and other solutions at scale, securely to all their customers.

KPMG and Microsoft India announced a strategic Internet of Things (IoT) Advisory partnership to accelerate the digital transformation of large and mid-market enterprises in the country.

Early cloud adopters in India include:

 Healthcare Companies

Leading Indian healthcare providers including Fortis Healthcare, Apollo Hospitals, LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), Narayana Health, Max Healthcare are using Microsoft Azure, Machine Learning, Data Analytics, CRM online and Office 365 to enhance their efficiency and improve patient care.

BFSI Companies 

Leading private sector banks, Bank of Baroda, HDFC, ICICI Lombard, IDFC, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Axis Bank are using local Microsoft cloud, or innovative solutions from start-ups such as Cloudcherry and ZingHR running on local Microsoft Cloud, to improve their operations and customer service.

Microsoft has made it easier for these BFSI customers to move to cloud through use of private connectivity to Azure using ExpressRoute partners such as Tata Communications and Sify.

Through Microsoft partner solutions, 22 of India’s leading insurance companies are using Office 365 and Azure from the local datacenter.

Several start-ups have developed innovative solutions for the insurance industry on Microsoft Azure.

CarIQ’s solution can be used for tracking driving behavior of customers, and calculate insurance premium based on an individual’s driving patterns. It can also help car owners track vehicle health.

e-Meditek offers Health Buzz, an end-to-end healthcare insurance module that uses machine learning and analytics to provide insights that help the insurance provider as well as the customer.

Start-ups 

Cloud services from local data centers have opened up new business opportunities for software solution providers and technology start-ups.

Zing HR, Altizon, Cloudcherry, Resulticks, Ameyo and Shephertz run their technology solutions for their customers on Microsoft Cloud.

iBot is working with Luminous Power Technologies (Luminous), a leading home electrical player in India, to launch next generation Connected Inverter. It runs on the Azure platform.

More than 4,600 start-ups in India are utilizing Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and services.

E-Commerce Companies

E-commerce pioneers Paytm, JustDial and Snapdeal are using machine learning, Bing, Skype and Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortana, to drive business innovation and customer delight.

Government 

The Andhra Pradesh Government uses Azure Machine learning to predict which students will struggle/drop out of school across its 10,000 schools. Officials have created more than 600,000 predictions using Azure Machine Learning, revolutionizing how Indian local governments increase student retention.

The Tamil Nadu Election Commission used Microsoft Cloud to power the last Tamil Nadu state election. They used Microsoft Azure to enhance the electoral experience for citizens. They did it with interactive electoral information boards and live streaming of polling process from 30,000 booths on their website. Six crore voters in the state interacted with the commission via the Microsoft Cloud.

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Game Changer: C. Sukumaran, Canon

Canon recently marked its 20th anniversary in India with a steadfast plan for the country across its enterprise, commercial, consumer and social initiatives. Canon India’s Vision 2020 charts its next phase of growth in India.

With a vision of accelerating growth and secure profits, under C. Sukumaran leadership, the CSP division is continuing to focus on government and enterprise business making Canon the industry leader in the printing domain.

Assistant Director, C. Sukumaran is leading CSP division’s Laser and Inkjet printer business in India and is accountable to take the marketing and sales of the products to the next level. He has been associated with Canon for over 15 years.

The company, in the next three years, aims to penetrate further in the country with its offerings, augment the photography culture in India and introduce technological advancements across business and consumer products.

Vision 2020 sets a growth target of Rs. 3500 crore for Canon India to be achieved by consistently attaining a year on year double digit growth. The company kick-starts its year-long celebrations to commemorate the 20 years with its business partners, vendors, consumers and employees.

Canon GTM strategy focused on expansion of inkjet and laser market expansion in IT reseller segment in India. “We believe channel partners are integral to the division’s growth prospects, hence we will be looking forward to work closely with the partners to create the required reach. We endeavor to penetrate intensely into Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets to create a wider and stronger customer base.” Said Sukumaran.

“There are 50+ RD all over the country under whom IT resellers work. Present strength is about 2000 active resellers engaged with us. Focus is to enlarge this number to 3000 next year.” He added.

Canon aims to grab deals in enterprise segment too. Laser printers are largely used by SMBs, government, SOHOs and large enterprises. Laser printers are for bulk printing and with new innovations and technology; we are also witnessing color laser printers being used by organizations. Last couple of years, it’s focusing on government sector, “Canon has lot of new models in laser segment which cater to large enterprise, government and especially banking. So here we have taken many steps to build strong SI channel.” Explained Sukumaran.

2017 is going to be big for Canon. It is strategically coming up with a new commercial channel. “As we are ready with whole bunch of laser products cater to government segment, we worked with our ND to enhance our SI community. This number goes to 50, next year our strategy would be to deepen this strength. We want to make it 100.”

Top ten cities spread across the country where the enterprise, government and BFSI sectors are investing are largely on the target of Canon.

Canon overall market growth numbered to 26% in Q3. While single function category registered 41% growth. “We aim to achieve 25% market share in the laser segment and 24% in the inkjet segment by the end of 2018.” Said Sukumaran.