Shrenik Bhayani, Kaspersky: “We would be very aggressive with our top 10 partners in India”

In a conversation with DQ Channels, Shrenik Bhayani, General Manager-South Asia speaks about Kaspersky‘s performance in India

How is Kaspersky different from others?

What we are doing is creating an environment within the organization in which the focus is around the customer business; it focuses on the enterprises &the infrastructure business. Each of the flavours is different because of the market opportunity, as well as the engagement into the market, is very different. And in terms of consumer space, I guess we are pretty much a establish brand.

As per my knowledge, kaspersky is the only company which is playing a big role in security infrastructure. But it takes sometimes in terms of customer environment. We also have to see what the variability in the environment are and then we propose the right solution around them.

What is the contribution of consumer business in India for Kaspersky?

In India at this point time, it’s closed to 65 to 70% of consumer business. And the balance is the enterprise business. The critical infrastructure business itself got launched last year. And currently, we are driving 2 POC in India. I can’t name them but we have 2 of them in India. The critical infrastructure is with the government’s POC and the 2nd one under discussion.

Here in POC, we are talking about large-scale power plants. It’s anything on the larger scale which is getting digitized. And the moment it gets digitized eventually means that there is an element in cybersecurity aspects which is in the focus. The 2nd aspect is the enterprise market. Where our focus is on anty-targeted solutions and what I mean by that is today in the enterprise a lot of people looks for the point solutions. So our offerings to enterprises are not only the product but it also about services.

Does Kaspersky perform a role of MSP?

We are not an MSP. But we have been the partner with enterprises who potentially are MSP’s or wished to be an MSSP which is a managed security service provider. A managed security service provider will effectively come in with their own service providers and OEM would come in with product offerings. Largely there is a shortage of skin set even at the customer side may be in terms of overall understanding of security service security and their own environment. So we will partner with MSSP we are already in some partnerships.

What will be the specific GTM for SME’s?

For us, every GTM for SME’s in the country is via channels. For enterprises, we will look at larger channels to understand enterprise business. But also it should have an understanding of cybersecurity business and maybe there are potential channels who want to invest and we will invest as well and create the business together.

How many channels partners are there?

Today we have more than thousand plus channels in the country and the larger part of this channel are focused around the SME’s. In terms of our enterprise presence, we do have 10 -15 channels which do really quality enterprise business.

We are now looking at some new channels who are either aspiring to be an MSP or who are already an MSSP. Overall we would play very aggressive with our top 10 players who are a Kaspersky partner for the very long time. I would onboard 10 to 15 very right channel in terms of targeting our enterprise business and then we would look at the whole critical infrastructure.

What are the ATL and BTL initiatives planned?

There is a lot of marketing activities. We featured live with our brand campaign last month so we have our hoarding. Our ads are getting played on the major radio channels and we are pretty much in the metro station in Mumbai and Delhi metro as well.