By B. Swaminathan
Adobe India is sending out a reassuring message to its channel partners, telling them that some of the new rebate schemes have been specifically designed to provide higher margins to the resellers. In a chat with Channel Times, Adobe India Managing Director Umang Bedi discusses the new schemes. Here are excerpts simplified in a Q&A format…
Q. What is the current strength of your channel?
We have 469 partners in India
Q. How many of them are Platinum, Gold, Certified and registered respectively?
We have 9 platinum partners, 14 gold partners, 122 certified partners and 324 registered partners.
Q. What is the growth in channels over the last two – three years?
In the past 18 months, I can tell you that our growth was 10x. We had less than 50 partners and today we stand close to 500 partners which gives you an indication of our growth in India. Our partner-related activities have also helped in building strong relationship with the community.
Q. What is the growth in business in terms of how many new accounts have been added to Creative Cloud and how many of the old customers have moved to Creative Cloud?
There has been lot of attractive happenings recently. We have added a million paid subscribers. If you ask on the percentage-wise breakup, it would be 90% buy on the creative cloud and 10 % on the perpetual model.
Q. How long will you continue to sell the CS6 version and when do they expect 100 % business in Creative Cloud?
We will continue to do CS6 versions. However, the future is going to be only on the creative cloud. For every customer, we will give a choice so that they can either go for a subscription model or the perpetual model.
Q. What is the growth in business in terms of percentage of revenue over last two – three year?
We cannot share the Indian revenue figures. However, globally, we stand at $ 995.1 billion. We have 1 million paid subscribers as we had checked in our recent Q3. Adobe is very serious about the Indian business and the global team has special concentration on the Indian market.
Q. Currently what is the revenue of Creative Cloud and legacy CS6 business contributing to revenue this year?
The revenue figures cannot be shared. Overall, it is $ 3 billion revenue and what we see in the creative cloud is every week, there are new updates coming and another advantage is a user can work with our software offline without using internet and they can download the software they want without downloading the entire suit.
Q. With the shift to Creative Cloud do you expect to pass your revenue in India compared to last year?
The growth is phenomenal and the responses are phenomenal. We expect the growth to be multiplying in huge numbers.
Q. What is the current employee strength in the country for sales and marketing Adobe products?
I cannot share the exact number of the employees at a division-specific level. Suffice to say that we are 2000 in India. However, I am sure that we are the only global corporation who has concentration of entire market. We have as many as 12 divisions including digital marketing, digital media enterprise, digital media key accounts, solutions connecting, consulting organization, marketing team, software legalization, region-based channel team where multiple channel managers across the country reporting to a regional-head, a team exclusively to take care of the SMB and industry associations and inside sales team to help all the partners generate leads. We are spread across everywhere now including places like Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, and Ahmedabad. In some places, we have an office set-up and in some places, we have one-man-show.
Q. You have enterprise and channel marketing teams and compliance team – what is the revenue generated be each of these units?
Again, I cannot disclose the numbers. But both are very critical part of the business and we have many large accounts in all the sectors including telecom, banking and finance, media and entertainment, health-care, e-commerce, retail, government, public sector, hospitality and what not?
Q. Can you please explain the recent managed partner rebate program?
In our managed partner rebates, on the achievement of 85% it is 1% for platinum and gold partners, on the achievement of 100%, it is 5% for platinum and 3% for Gold. On the achievement of 110% and more, it is 6% for Platinum and 4% for Gold. For all the sales related to Creative Cloud for Teams (CCT), partner gets 3% and on the achievement of the target in CCT, partner gets up to 1.75% of the total revenue.
Can you please explain the deal registration program?
Through this program, we are protecting the channel. The major objective of this rebate structure is to introduce new clients. Winning or losing comes next. For more than 20+ seats, if a partner wins, he/she gets 30% and even if lost, he/she gets 18%. For more than 5+ seats, a partner gets 20% and even if lost, partner gets 12%.
Also Read:
Adobe assures high margins in rebate schemes
Adobe India launches single app plan for creative cloud teams