TeamViewer aims for  100–150% growth in India

Launched in 2005, TeamViewer empowers users to connect anything, anywhere, anytime. It focuses on-based technologies to enable online remote support and collaboration globally. Its solutions offer secure remote access, support, control and collaboration capabilities for online endpoints of any kind. In a chat with VARINDIA, Krunal Patel, Sales Head, India and South Asia, TeamViewer, discusses about the importance of the Indian market, its positioning, channel strategy, R&D, etc  
 

How India is very important for you?

If you see by any skill, India is the fastest-growing digital country in the world. The way how we have adopted digital technology and digital transformation is far better than what we have seen in other countries. So, TeamViewer's strategy has been very clear. There are three important pillars which we look at when we look at a country. One is the technology adoption, second is the business acceptance and the business itself and third is society, how is the societal impact. When we talk of technology, India would be in top ten countries in the world for adoption of new technologies. The various initiatives which India has taken in the past decade which is far ahead of a lot of western countries, including smart banking and smart citizen services. So, there is a whole lot of technology adoptions available. We are by far one of the fastest-growing cloud countries in the world. So, one is technology, second is business. There is a lot of acceptance towards digital transformation in large businesses. Maybe in the last three years we have seen the highest number of start-ups coming into a variety of segments and industries so business is flourishing. There is a forecasted GDP growth, which is well beyond a lot of countries in the world. Third is society. So, there are initiatives like Digital India, Smart City, Skill India which are empowering the citizen and there is a push which is there from the society and government, to make this all a reality. Our sweet spot is somewhere in-between these three. We support all kinds of businesses. We are trying to bring the best-of-breed of technology, which is secure and forward looking and we can support a lot of society initiatives using TeamViewer.

How strong you are in India?

We started in India very recently. We already have a very good ecosystem that has used TeamViewer and appreciates the features and functionality. We are building on that, educating people about new solutions, innovation and technology. We are also building our own ecosystem when it comes to resellers and partners. In India when I look at the resellers segment, we already have 100+ signed resellers across India and just to give you a prospective we have 70+ resellers who have done more than two deals in the last four months or so, which means that partners are understanding the solution and they are able to sell it. Also, customers are understanding the value of TeamViewer’s software and packages.

Which are the verticals that have adopted your solution?

TeamViewer is a very horizontal application and it's a connectivity tool. So we have customers in all shapes and sizes. We have customers who are into retail with showrooms and with dealership; we have customers who are enterprise and also customers who are in NGOs and education space for using this as a teaching aid. As we are a horizontal solution, we operate in all the industries. Currently, we have customers in ITeS, FMCG, banking, manufacturing, professional services, retail, and higher education research industries.  Majority of the industry uses this as a remote support and remote access tool.

What is the R&D support of the team viewer in India?

TeamViewer is developed, designed and enhanced in Germany. Our entire development centre is right now in Germany. When we came to India, we were trying to solve two major problems – one was to be closer to our customers and the second was to support them well. So, the first thing what we did, unlike only opening a sales office, we opened a customer support office also. We set up a customer support call centre here; we opened a local toll-free number, which will become operational from this month. The problem it solved is that earlier we were supporting customers from Australia and Germany, now we have local support unlike very few cloud service providers or cloud software service providers. We still believe in talking to people and that's why we are having a call centre, a toll-free number, and people can call us. The first objective is we want to be closer to our customers. In our GTM, we will have people regionally available, who can talk to customers, make them understand our product, try it for some time, our partner can talk to them, there are partners who will be educated on TeamViewer solution and the second is customer support, so that we are available full time when customers want us. Why customer support is important, because on an average maximum use of TeamViewer happens when there is a crisis situation, when something fails because generally you don't remote connect when everything is okay. So, we are there to support and handhold a customer when they need it the most.

How do you approach to market – channel or direct?

So globally we have multiple GTMs. We have direct GTM and indirect GTM. Indirect GTM basically is the distributor-reseller model, where we have appointed a distributor right now and now we are appointing resellers. It will be a balance of online and offline sales. Currently, we have an online webstore where we sell direct. Gradually, we believe offline GTM would also be equally important. There are multiple GTM, there is direct GTM which is basically selling direct to the customer and there is indirect GTM. We would constantly work to balance and would be transparent in both the GTMs. We will continue to work with resellers, partners and customers to ensure that they can get the best solution.

How do you integrate distribution network like distributor, biller, etc? 

So currently we have Ingram Micro, which has signed us as our first distributor and we have three levels of partnership – Silver, Gold and Platinum.  Silver and Gold partnership works with distributor and platinum partners work directly with TeamViewer. There are very few Platinum partners at this point of time and we are looking at our current Platinum partner Software one and Softline. We may not have more than five Platinum partners because we want to grow the reseller ecosystem. We will support and go out of the way to support our Silver and Gold partners. 

What kind of revenue you are earning in India and how do you want to scale it up?

So far, we have not reported Indian revenues in a separate manner, but from the growth stand, we are at least looking at 100–150% of the growth, depending on what investments we are putting in the business.