Even a couple of years back Harry Cheung, managing director of Kaspersky Lab Asia-Pacific, one of the world's top four leading IT security software companies, didn't really care about Bangladesh market. But for the past two years when he saw the figures grow it amazed him and right now to them it is one of the main countries in South Asia other than India.
Cheung admitted this during an exclusive interview with The Daily Star few days back when he flew down to Dhaka for the first time during a corporate product launch.
Kaspersky has been present in Bangladesh for the past three years and so far for the past two and half years or so Cheung has seen a phenomenal growth in this market and according to him the numbers kept on jumping and the growth rate was very close to 100 per cent a year. He gave the credit to their partner Office Extracts, sole distributor for Bangladesh and Bhutan, who have been doing a very good job in this market.
“Our partner did a very good job but at the same time we also supported them quite a lot, otherwise it wouldn't have been possible. We agree in many areas to develop the business here such as having a better pricing for our products and helping with marketing and subsidising,” Cheung said.
“We try to give them a lot of margin so that they can use the margin to do a lot of things in the country. And it worked; it not only worked in Bangladesh but also has worked in many other countries,” he added.
When asked about the number of active Kaspersky users in Bangladesh, Prabeer Sarkar, CEO of Office Extracts mentioned that till 2010 there were 350 thousand users in this market and this year is projected at 700 thousand and the company's target is to reach a million users by 2012.
“The numbers of internet users in Bangladesh are increasing faster and if that continues we are looking at 3 million users by 2014,” Cheung said.
The Kaspersky boss also mentioned that the year 2014 is the company's target year to reach number three in the world. In fact the company's headquarter wants to reach the number one position by 2014 and they are targeting for it.
“Usually we have a new version of product every year and we are developing a so called 'Killer Product' for the corporate level. We are very confident that this will be a strong product for the corporates.”
Cheung admitted that they have been slow in terms of corporate products. “We had some problems internally but now it is all over and we are very excited about this product.”
While talking about the new product he said that it's quite similar to those which are already in the market.
“We didn't try to change the product completely as users tend to see at products that are similar to what they have been using before, so most of the functionalities are pretty much the same as our competitors but other than that we do have something special that makes our product better,” he said.
When asked about challenges in this market he said that they don't face any mentionable hurdles in the Bangladesh market and the company has almost 90 per cent of the market share.
“This is the only country where we have 90 per cent of the market share whereas in Vietnam we have 70 per cent. Even though the revenues in terms of figures are not that big but I think that will come someday.”
“I don't think our competitors will have any room to make a move in this market and if they do I am sure we'll try our best to defend that,” he added.
Cheung mentioned that his company would want to work with the government, the IT body of the government and even large corporations and organisations and plans to do a lot of activities within the next few years.
“We may even look at establishing some kind of a support centre here, localisation in the area, a whole big team in Bangladesh to work for South Asia.”
“We do have a lot of after-sales support in the area, not only in South Asia also in South East Asian region. After-sales support in countries such as Australia are very costly, where in this country people speak good English and I believe it's a good destination to set up a centre here, but right now we have to decide whether this should be in India or Bangladesh. More study is needed in this regard such as human resources and their quality,” he said.
He also mentioned that at the moment they don't have any plans to set up a representative office in Bangladesh. Furthermore, he mentioned that when they have a strong corporate customer base, may be then the company may think of having a local presence.
Sarker mentioned that education is the largest sector using Kaspersky and at present there are over 10,000 licenses already most of which are universities.
“I think approximately 27 universities are using Kaspersky and the schools are coming next. So right now the government and the academics enjoy 50 percent discount on the standard prices.
When asked if antivirus companies have an underground lab where they make viruses, Cheung said, “We are very busy catching viruses. We really don't know how many viruses are created every day but there is a lot. So why would we create viruses. I can guarantee you we are very busy in analyzing viruses. We are antivirus company not a virus making company.”
News Source:
The Daily Star
No comments:
Post a Comment