Quick Heal Drops Legal Case Against Snapdeal, But Its Fight Is Still On

New Delhi, August 10: Pune-based anti-virus major Quick Heal Technologies has decided to drop a legal case against one of India’s leading e-tailers Snapdeal, following the business understanding between the two.

However, the legal cases against four other e-commerce portals will continue, informed Kailash Katkar, MD & CEO of Quick Heal Technologies, who was in the city last week to announce the winner of ‘Quick Heal Khareedo Gaddi Jeeto’ contest winner.

While Katkar confirmed cases against Snapdeal and Flipkart, he refused to divulge the names of other three etailers. Quick Heal had served a legal notice to five leading online companies including Snapdeal and Flipkart for alleged unauthorized sale of its products. After directions from a Pune court, the online portals had to discontinue the sale of these products.

Meanwhile, Snapdeal was the first to settle the dispute and formally become authorized etailer for selling the software of Quick Heal. Katkar also clarified the company’s stand: “We are not against any online portals. The only thing we want is to have a proper understanding and a formally signed agreement to sell our products through our distributor. We will not allow unethical procurement of our solutions, without our permission.”

For Quick Heal, the online business is less than 5%.

New focus areas
Another big focus for Quick Heal is to establish its enterprise IT security software– Seqrite in the corporate sector. In consumer space, Quick Heal is one of the fastest growing players. With a 33% marketshare, the company is now making efforts to replicate the consumer success in enterprise as well.

Katkar said: “In FY 2014-15, we did Rs 303 crore revenue, and carved out our enterprise business under Seqrite brand. We have shifted all our enterprise solutions to this new brand, so now we have Quick Heal for customers and Seqrite for enterprises. To grow our enterprise business, we have a separate team for R&D, sales and marketing including 150 marketing people across India, and for R&D we have 200 people.”

Quick Heal had been present in the enterprise space for quite a while under the Quick Heal brand, due to this the consumer acceptance was not much. But since it has separated into another brand. the company has started gaining a steady ground. “To remain focused in the consumer space, which is almost 70% of the revenue contributor, we will continue to rule the roost,” he added.

In the Enterprise business, Seqrite covers end point security, MDM, DLP, terminator, UTM, firewall, and offers business critical services. The company sold thousands of UTM units in Japan last year and is now looking for pan India focus.

Challenges in consumer space
When asked about the growing challenges in consumer space, Katkar said, “Selling just an antivirus in the market is no longer the sole need. At homes, though the number of PCs is reduced to single digit, we are growing in doubled digits. Today, we have 7-8 million users base in India for our antivirus, and have 16% renewal business. Having said that we are not just into antivirus, we have features like website filtering, which monitor the behavior of the PC activities and quarantines sites.”

Katkar also pointed out that as the malware and virus writers have been growing in numbers, the company has been receiving around 2-3 lakh unique samples of malwares in a day and this base is growing day by day. Quick Heal is just a security guard and we do not have control of your systems.

The another big focus area for Quick Heal is to increase its export business. In the last 2-3 years, it has set up direct offices in Kenya, Japan, Dubai and the US and it is making efforts to establish as a brand. Additionally, it has signed partners in 35-40 countries. Currently, the export business contributed 10% in the last FY.

Sharing the plans for FY16, Katkar said, “We are looking for a moderate growth of 25%, with Rs 360-370 crore turnover. Now, it is also diversified into Quick Heal gadgets security solutions for mobile security and insurance.”