“We aim to establish overselves as a network video solutions company"

In a candid interaction with the DQ Channels, Sudhindra Holla, Country Head, Axis Communications sheds light on the key pillars the success of the Swedish Network video solutions provider in the Indian network video market

Axis Communication commenced its India operations in the year 2007. How has been your journey in the video surveillance industry in India in terms of growth and expansion?

Sudhindra Holla: We started exploring the Indian market in the year 2006. We opened a full fledge office in Bangalore in 2007 and then slowly expanded our foot prints in other cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and also in the SAARC region. The journey has been quite promising so far. We witnessed close to 30 percent growth in 2015, where the industry growth was at around 20-22 percent. We successfully executed some of the crucial projects during the year such as Nanded Safe City project and Nashik Kumbha Mela project and also acquired some very big Corporate clients. At present we have around 750 enterprise customers using Axis solutions. We have installed more than 100 thousand plus cameras across the industries and verticals so far. So the India story is pretty encouraging for us in terms of overall business growth.

Being one of the prominent video network solution providers, what are the key trends do you observe in the network video industry?

Sudhindra Holla: We saw a significant amount of conversion happening from Analog to IP technology, specifically in the Enterprise segment. Today, Analog and IP have 50-50 percent market share. Going forward, IP will take a lead with around 85 percent market share in India in next 5 years. I would not say that Analog will completely go away, but IP will gain dominance. IP technology offers several benefits such as remote monitoring, security of data, HD quality etc. Considering the benefits of IP, it would be very difficult to Analog to really scale up in the near future. Secondly, with the government rolling out several City Surveillance projects, it will further escalate the demand for IP cameras in such kind of initiatives.

What role do you see for yourself in the Government of India initiatives like Smart Cities and other City surveillance projects? 

Sudhindra Holla: There is a lot of scope in the critical infrastructure and city surveillance projects. However, these projects are still in the tendering phase. I see the tenders probably would be coming out in the second half of this year and the actual implementation will start at the end of next year. We see ourselves playing a major role in such kind of initiatives. We are engaging with the consultants who are nominated for these government projects and we are trying to share our experiences with the customers and the consultants. Safety is the prime element of any Smart city where we play a major role in the deployment of smart solutions. We have already implemented some of the safe city projects like Nanded and Junagarh safe city project and we are trying to leverage on our domain knowledge and expertise and share our experience with the consultants and authorities.

What is a role of your channel partners in your growth? What are your Channel plans and programs for 2016?

Sudhindra Holla: Channel partners are key to our success in India. We follow tier 2 model that means we sell only through system integrators. We have global partners such as ICD, G4S, Honeywell, Tyco and Siemens and we have focused partners or loyal partners such as Nextgen Integrated Systems, Unicom, Netplace, Wipro , L&T, SVNT, Chubb, Vihawk, Nervecentrex, Vantage, MK, Poliexcel and Technosys who are engaged with us on a large project. We had launched “Closer to the partners” initiative in 2015. We will enhance our focus on this channel program in this fiscal. We are working very closely with our focus/loyal partners so that they can deliver the solutions to the end customers more efficiently. We will engage with the global partners such as G4S, Honeywell, Tyco and Siemens. At the same time we intend to increase the active partners. This is not to create a competition within our channel, but to increase the number of customers buying solutions from Axis.

What are the key thrust areas for Axis Communications in 2016?

Sudhindra Holla: We aim to establish ourselves as a Solution company rather than Camera only company. We will be focusing on the four key growth pillars of our business in India. The first and very significant element is strengthening our partners. We will more focus on ‘getting closer to the partners.  This would be in the form of engaging with them on market development initiatives like events, etc. Secondly, we will increase the number of active partners in India. We will enhance our product portfolio with cutting edge technology solutions and bring innovative offerings for our partners. Another key focus area is to get involved in strategic projects like critical infrastructure projects, defence projects and City surveillance projects.