An Exclusive Channel Partner Strategy

How is your sales growth connected to the channel network?

Every opportunity is always managed by our partners. Not a single opportunity is managed directly by us. 100% of revenue comes through my partner ecosystem. It’s a very tight connection between my partner ecosystem and the sales revenue.

The second reason this is so important to me is that I can’t survive without my partner ecosystem. Worldwide, we have 550,000 customers. Such a large customer base can only be catered to with a strong ecosystem and a strong partner network. I'm proud that, as we captured the number one position three years ago – whether you look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant, IDC, or Forrester – we are number one. In such a crowded market, standing tall is only possible because we are standing on our partners' shoulders.

Regarding your business strategy, how are you building your strategy for the 2025 financial year? And where do partners fit into it?

There are a couple of things to consider. First, when looking at our expansion, we consider geo-expansion – how we can enter tier two and tier three cities. We are not going to invest in our own employees in tier-three cities. That’s where my partner ecosystem will play a crucial and commendable role, from opportunity generation to driving the opportunity, closing the deal, and executing the right implementation.

The second aspect is the tremendous growth we see in application modernisation. When any customer undergoes application moderniation, they also seek protection. This means the days of the monolithic approach are gone. It’s all about Cloud-native or hybrid cloud adoption, which is what customers are looking for. I can cater to one, two, or ten customers, but to reach 100 customers, partners are the only vehicle I’m going to rely on.

Third, I talked about geo-expansion and technology assets. Additionally, we see a great opportunity to work with some private sectors, which we call enterprise. Whether you look at BFSI, ITS, pharmaceuticals, or healthcare as verticals, I see tremendous growth in each. Customers in these areas are adopting our solution, but again, deployment and management of everything are always managed by my partner ecosystem.

How exactly are you planning to expand Backup as a Service with your service providers?

We call it BaaS. Everything is becoming SaaSified. As the world continues to become more SaaSified, we believe that backup is also following this trend, presenting a much larger opportunity for us. Backup as a Service can be tier one, which we manage, or tier two, which is custom-built for a customer by our service providers. These are the ones we started catering to this year through our service providers.

The first step we have taken is with M365. It’s not only about M365; it’s also about protecting your email, SharePoint, Teams network, and OneDrive. These are the four SaaSified applications we are focusing on and we believe there is a much larger opportunity here. Of course, the second opportunity involves Salesforce and a few more that are already in the pipeline.

Tier two can be managed by my service provider partners, with more offerings to come in the future.

Could you talk in a bit more detail about your market strategy and growth strategy for tier two and tier three cities?

I look at the potential of tier-one cities, and the answer is yes, there's huge potential. It’s still growing. For us, even as a market leader, we see a great opportunity to work with some of the largest conglomerates in India and some of the largest manufacturing units.

Our approach prioritises tier-one cities, which are still very important to us, and we will continue to invest there. We have expanded beyond Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, and Ahmedabad. We are covering all these cities directly. Tier two and tier three cities, where we now have a person operating, also present substantial potential.

Tier two cities are 100% driven by my partner ecosystem. The bigger question is how to enable them, which is why we started conducting small boot camps with partners. These boot camps involve working closely with them and entering customers' premises together.

I believe the best learning is on the field itself, rather than in boardroom or training discussions. So we go on calls with them in various cities, which allows them to accelerate and generate new opportunities.

We enable partners so that they can earn not only during the deal but also after the deal by doing the right deployment. Additionally, we focus on renewals. When customers renew their contracts after one, three, or five years, the same partner returns to cater to the customer with the same protected margin.

We have in building our R&D and research and development centre in Bangalore. We also have a support centre coming in and are expanding our channel alliance and sales ecosystem within the country. We are empowering women in green and women in the cloud. Approximately 1,800 employees are being trained in various universities, as Sandeep mentioned yesterday.

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