Exclusive Interview: Sanjeev Bhasin, Founder and MD, CEECO Technologies

Barco, a visualization and collaboration technology recently conducted Barco Partner Summit in Bali, Indonesia. The event hosted 130+ APAC partners from across all divisions to showcase Barco’s product portfolio, strategies, and how APAC intends to double its revenue by 2022.

In an interaction with DQ Channels, Sanjeev Bhasin, Founder, and MD, CEECO Technologies, value-added distributor for Barco in India shared his perspective on current market trends and focus areas in 2019.

What are the business opportunities and current market trends in the Enterprise segment?

According to IMRB-Kantar report, there are about 7.5 lakh meeting rooms available in India at present and with the increased focus on digitization and automation, we expect this market to grow significantly in the next few years.

Multi-site collaboration allows team members to connect to a currently running presentation or meeting from remote locations without having to be physically present. This indicates immense growth in the wireless collaboration segment as the enterprises have started investing in meeting room devices and solutions for employees.

Some of the trends in this segment are:

• Wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi so that devices can plug into meeting room hardware quickly and easily for meetings
• Instant access, in order that repeat connections are established immediately
• Open standards for device interoperability, so that any device can connect to the system. This helps support BYOD, for example- Software that supports responsive screen resolutions, so that visuals are optimized on any device, large screens and small

Clickshare from Barco is one of the most unique products which cater to this segment. We see opportunities across sectors and industries and we are aggressively seeing adoption from SMEs, Government and in verticals such as defense and education. The market is also growing at a rate of around 30%. With thousands of meetings held every day across the nation, the market potential for this solution is huge and this is a clear opportunity for us.

What differentiates Barco’s products and solutions from other key players in the Market? 

If we look at wireless collaboration business, Barco is the market leader, holding 42% market share by value & 26% market share by volume (Ref. IMRB market research report, Jan 2018). Barco’s Clickshare has unique and innovative features to help organizations automate and provide a unique meeting room experience. We see a high demand for this product across sectors and are confident that it will revolutionize the way enterprises do meetings.

Barco ClickShare was designed to bring the ‘stress-free’ experience to boardrooms, high-end meeting rooms, and conference rooms. Introducing several unique features, including simultaneous sharing of up to 8 people, automatic & manual moderation, and blackboarding & annotation, the CSE-800 is the most powerful system in the ClickShare family today. It was designed for enterprise rollouts and offers enhanced security features, a wider range of connectivity options – including AirPlay and Google Cast support for non-HDCP content – and central management. Users simply plug a USB-powered device – the ClickShare Button – into their PC or Mac and click the button to get the content from their laptop on the large meeting room screen. With the ClickShare Apps, users can also share content from their laptops, mobile phones or tablets.

We have 150+ active Dealers / SI across India and cater to the leading companies across industries which are using Barco’s Clickshare extensively. It has generated good market traction and has prominent customers in various industry verticals/segments like Capgemini, WNS, Accenture, Genpact, Verizon, etc. in IT/ITES Vertical; ABB, Dupont, Bose, BENZ etc. in Manufacturing Verticals; JLL, PWC, E&Y, McKinsey, CBRE etc. in Professional Consultancy Segment; Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, Swiss Re, BNY etc. in BFSI Vertical; Aditya Birla, Reliance, GE etc. in Large Enterprise Conglomerate; Tata Communication, Ericsson, Airtel etc. in Telecom Vertical; MakeMyTrip, Wal-Mart etc. in e-Commerce Space; Hero Motor, Royal Enfield, Nissan, TVS Motor etc. in Automobile segment; Hindustan Unilever, Nestle, ITC etc. in FMCG Segment; Exxon Mobil, Shell etc. in Oil & Gas domain. This is just a partial list and more than 40% of global fortune 500 companies are using ClickShare in their meeting rooms across the world.

What are your focus areas in 2019?

Our focus will be in line with Barco’s GTM strategy of ‘empowering’ & ‘enabling’ the channel partners. We will continue focusing on multiple partner programs to keep them updated with Barco’s products and technology at large.

We will focus on our channel partners by deploying training through Barco’s connect partner program which offers several partner levels with varying associated benefits and requirements. Understanding evolving customer needs across geographies and catering them better through channel partners in the enterprise segment with unique offerings from Barco will continue to be our focus.

Initiatives to assist and support our channel partners, we take many initiatives like Channel training Program, Back-end rebate, Demo discount, Partner Certification, Preferential transfer price based on commitment &investment, Product Demo & POC assistance, Time-bound, target driven channel incentive scheme, Remote Assistance/troubleshooting, and Service Training.

For Clickshare, we follow a two-tier model of distribution, we import the products from Barco Belgium and then sell them to the next tier of partners who are called the VARs or Dealers and they, in turn, sell it to the end customers. Further, we are aggressively focusing on onboarding new partners to help reach out to more customers.