After security company Cyberoam (as part of Elitecore Technologies) was acquired by another security giant Sophos, it is all set for the next phase of expansion. Sunil Sharma, Vice President, sales, India and Saarc in his first interview post the deal, talks about the integration process and his sales teams plan to grow the overall business of Sophos security solutions across India besides UTM market by Cyberoam (a Sophos company)
CT: Cyberaom has been acquired by Sophos, when will integration process be completed
Sharma: In February 10, 2014, Sophos made its first inorganic deal for India market by acquiring Cyberaom. This acquisition has three stake holders: employee, partners and customers. All three has taken this news very positively. Both the companies have similar culture, secondly in India and SAARC, Sophos has got very thin presence in terms of channel and people in feet on ground. One of the reasons, why Sophos acquired Cyberaom is to strengthen its business in India. We are upbeat about this acquisition. Prior to this deal, Cyberoam was selling only UTM, network security appliances, but with Sophos our product portfolio has been increased with end point security, anti-virus, HIPS, encryption, mobile device management.
Acquisition is completed and integration process is on it will take another 12-18 months to complete the process. It took more than a year to close this deal. Sophos looked at our R&D facilities in Ahmadabad, product development and our global support center, which is supporting 125 countries, at the same time for India, and we have 100 people in our support center. Hemal Patel continues to operate as a CEO of Cyberoam Technologies.
CT: Tell us about Cyberoam presence in international markets and total strength of the company…
Sharma: We started our SAARC business two years ago, we had added Sri Lanka and Maldives, Bangladesh and Nepal business in FY 13-14. This year, we have also started Bhutan business. In FY 15, we will see 7-8 percent will be coming from these countries, its only 3.5 percent revenue contribution. We are largely operating through Redington and local distributors in these countries. Today, we are covering 125 countries, of which we are having direct presence in few countries like US, Europe, Africa, middle east and APAC. Harish Chib looks after the rest of the world and I look after the India and SAARC. Currently, Cyberoam has 500 people in India, wherein Sophos has 5-6, but Worldwide it has 1700. Today, Cyberoam & Sophos combined are a strength of 2200 people across the globe. Kuldeep Raina, based out of India, operates as the Country Manager for Sophos.
CT: Will there be any brand syndication, post this acquisition? When do we see Cyberoam sales team start pitching for Sophos and Astaro Security products to the customers?
Sharma: Cyberoam name will be intact in the market. In addition to Cyberoam, Sophos also had acquired Astaro, but we have seen in some parts of the world, Astaro brand has been renamed. As of now Cyberoam as a brand will continue to exist. Basis the strategy planned we may consider retaining the brand “Cyberoam” in certain markets where it has very good brand equity.
In our sales we have 60 people located out of 12 branches. All products are complimenting to each other. Sophos products talk about simple security solutions for pragmatic enterprise kind of a market, wherein its end point solution caters to SMBs. On the other hand, Cyberoam has strong presence in network security, wherein Astaro products cater to large enterprise, in some areas there are some products, which we don’t have. Hence, we do see overlapping of the products with Astaro range to our NG series of products.
CT: How about customers support, warranties and partners enablement, will there be any change?
Sharma: We will continue to support our customers for warranties and RMAs for next 18 months. Moreover, we had conducted seven cities roadshow and webinars, post the acquisition for understanding our partners reaction and their queries. In terms of partners and sales training. Today, our partners are selling network security, we have started partner’s enablement on other products. Our internal sales team is ready with products training. We should start pre and post sales in next 45 days. By May 15, 2014, we will start sending out price quotation for Sophos products to our partners and customers.
We are ready with our Cyberoam products road-map for this year. In totality, the acquisition has been a win-win deal for both the companies. We will continue to sell our products to our customers, and add on Sophos to our portfolio, but we will not be seriously see Astaro business getting through us. We want our single partner can sell other products too.
CT: What has been the overall performance of Cyberoam in FY 13-14?
Sharma: We recently had our annual sales meet in Goa where we recognized and awarded sales team for their sales target. We have overachieved our targets for the year. in fact, 16 of our sales team got qualified for our Cyberoam’s President Club. As part of the reward, we will be sending them to Singapore for vacations on June with their spouses.
Overall, we had a 40 percent growth in this FY 2013-14 year. For next fiscal year, we have set 37 percent growth over previous years. This growth came from segments like SMBs, education, govt, defense, manufacturing, and healthcare. Our plans for this year, we will have more products to cater to SMBs and SME segment. We are getting into SAARC operations. We are also strengthening our local presence in tier II cities.