Arkadin eyes Indian conferencing market aggressively

Arkadin, one of the global

majors in audio and Web-conferencing announced its aggressive plans

for the Indian market, which include increasing its employee strength

in India from 45 to 60 by 2011 and tie-ups with Indian telecom

service operators. The market for audio and

video conferencing in Asia Pacific has exhibited double digit YoY

growth rate of 11.9 percent to reach the US$ 402.9 million mark in

value terms in 2009 and it is expected to catapult to US$ 770 million

by 2016, as per the recent Frost & Sullivan report. The declining

prices are one of the biggest growth factors. According to the

report, Asia Pacific consumed 2993.1 million minutes of usage (audio

and video conferencing) in 2009. When it comes to India,

Frost & Sullivan research reports, that the revenues from video

conferencing (US$ 8 million) and audio conferencing (US$ 24.8

million) put together were US$ 32.8 million in 2009 and collectively

they are expected to reach the US$ 86.4 million by 2016 (US$ 16.8

million for video conferencing and US$ 69.6 million for audio

conferencing).



Olivier de Puymorin,
Founder and CEO of Arkadin said, “India is a strategic market for

Arkadin. Indian businesses are increasingly using conferencing, as it

results in time and resource management and of course, cost savings.

We see an immense business potential here and our business is poised

to grow considering the fact, that the Indian economy is getting

stronger by the day, business environment is favorable and the

research indicates, that the market size (for audio and video

conferencing put together) is going to get almost tripled in 2016,

than what it was about a year back. All of this gives us more

credible reasons for eyeing the Indian market aggressively.”



The company had started
its Indian operations in 2008 in partnership with ConferIndia and

since then it has expanded its direct office network in the country

to Noida, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Pune. Arkadin ConferIndia

now has 600 plus customers in India, which include names of repute

like Pepsico, Nokia, Volvo, Suzlon, Bharti, Whirlpool, Aditya Birla

Group, Shell, L&T etc. The Company also established its 24x7

global customer support center in Noida, besides local access from 15

cities in India. The tie-up with the Indian

telecom service operators shall be in accordance with its recent

strategic agreement with SingTel in Singapore wherein SingTel shall

exclusively offer Arkadin's audio and Web-conferencing and

collaboration solutions for its WorldConference virtual meeting

service to all its customers in Singapore. ArkadinAnytime,

ArkadinEvent and ArkadinAnywhere audio and Web-conferencing solutions

will be offered under SingTel's WorldConference brand as SingTel

Anytime, SingTel Anywhere and SingTel Event.