Becoming a Cloud Partner: Journey of Tricom Multimedia

In this very unique segment of DQ Channels, we have covered Mumbai based Tricom Multimedia Pvt Ltd. becoming a Cloud Partner from a traditional Channel Partner. Harinder Salwan, Director and Managing Director shared his entire journey about how did he move to the cloud business, challenges, growth, and future vision.

Harinder Salwan is a graduate in electronics and communication from Nit Kurukshetra. He was a partner in trident communications setup in 1991 to promote the concept of multimedia and was involved in launching brands like Creative, Aztech, Multiwave, Aver, and technologies like VCD and DVD in the Indian market. All these launches paved the way for the undersigned to receive the title of The Multimedia Man in the year 1996 from the reputed industry magazine DATAQUEST. Tricom group was set up in 1994 with Tricom multimedia as the first company consequent to the closure of Trident communications.

To focus on the developing market of multimedia software, Tricom international was born as a consequence of the reorganization of Tricom multimedia which was marketing the multimedia hardware and software in the western region of India since 1994.

When and how did you move to Cloud Business?

We moved to cloud business in 2012 when Adobe moved its business to Cloud from perpetual licensing to subscription-based licensing.

What are the different Cloud services do you offer?

We are currently offering subscription services for applications from Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, and Dropbox.

Previously on Cloud Journey: Blazeclan Technologies

What sort of changes have you done to move to the cloud within the organization in terms of Team, skill set, infrastructure, and others?

We have since the move happened to the cloud licensing reduced the field team, consolidated offices to a single location and reduced infrastructure costs and when this transition happened the business volume fell 1/3 due to the pricing model of the subscription but then over the last 8 years we have seen that the average growth has been a steady 20 – 30 % annually and we were able to reach back to our business volume in 5 years and the bottom lines have been healthy as recurring expenses of finding new users have come down drastically and the last 8 years have been spent to move most of the customers to the cloud subscription model steadily.

How your old and new customers adopting the new technology and moving to the cloud?

There was an initial resistance from quite a few customers to move to a subscription licensing model but slowly with the changing face of applications and demands by the market forces those customers have been moving to need-based purchases so that they remain connected to the latest offerings of the tools as that helps them to retain their accounts also.

What are the different challenges did you face in this journey?

The only challenge we faced is convincing the customers. To highlight the cost hurdle we used to sell a Photoshop for 28 thousand for life long use and today in the subscription model we are charging a customer 33 thousand for a yearly subscription and the taxes have been more or less the same around 18 % of the cost of the product. So convincing the customer to pay a price which as shown in the above example is something which has been the biggest challenge to date.

What is your overall growth being a Cloud Partner?

As stated earlier we have seen an average of 20-30 % growth in revenue and most of it is happening due to the price increases that the vendors are implementing as initially, they offer over 50 % discounts in subscription to get more customers attracted and once they are addicted to the concept then they end up paying as demanded. This is my personal observation and most of the vendors will concur with the observation.

What are your future goals?

We are looking at continuing to cater to the total software licensing needs of our customers and add more products that fit into our business products bundle as we would prefer to restrict to our own domain rather than explore more opportunities being offered in different verticals of the market.