BFSI generates 50% business for Propalms

For Propalms BFSI and Manufacturing are the two large verticals from where the company is getting maximum business in India. The company’s 50% of business comes from manufacturing and FMCG segments. Vikas Chalke, Country Manager, Channel Sales Propalms talks to Bhawna Satsangi about the company’s strategies to penetrate in India and make brand awareness.

What is the present focus of the company?

We are a virtualization company headquartered in UK. We are into space of application virtualization from 15 years and over the period of last 5 years we have diversified our portfolio from application virtualization to desktop virtualization, network virtualization. When it comes to remote access the virtualization set up required in and around the remote access environment that we provide.

What was the reason of this diversification?

First 10 years we were predominantly the single product company where we were talking about only application virtualization where in you can virtualize your application over the service computing environment and reducing your bandwidth requirement and application management space. But what we have observed over last few years, when it comes to application virtualization in the developing markets application virtualization is used to reduce the bandwidth requirement for the remote access infrastructure.

Today customer is looking at the end to end solution by remote access perspective so by delivering application over looking bandwidth I am addressing one of the concern areas of customer but if I have to address his entire remote access control then I have to have fleet of solutions to offer. That where Propalms started adding solutions to the portfolio which can address additional requirements which are in the space of application virtualization or remote access. We have also added VDI solution to our portfolio and adding solutions to the virtualization space.

Which verticals do you see potential for your business?

Manufacturing and BFSI are the large verticals we are tapping and sees potential in India. Large SMEs, enterprises or corporate in India got some of the other ERP applications like somebody is using SAP, home grown ERP, now extending the ERP applications over different kinds of network scenario or from different platforms, so that’s where we are looking at a platform to make it completely independent of the end point and due scalability to the environment. So manufacturing has the large customer base for us. From India we have 50% customer base from manufacturing and FMCG segment.

BFSI is the second largest segment for us where we have quite a few banks like cooperative banks, nationalized banks, corporate banks, insurance companies etc. They have been using Propalms solution from over last few years. We have been catering the segment from past 5 years. Other segments like Infrastructure, retail, IT ITES we see good enough customer base that we carry as an organization.

Manufacturing and BFSI are wide opportunity sectors which we carried but other verticals also carry opportunity for us. Currently 20% of our business comes from BFSI in India, from ITES we cover 10% of business, and traditionally infrastructure was doing good for us in India in last 5 years and 10-15% business coming from Infra but over last couple of years the percentage have reduced.

How do you tap these verticals?

We do have a complete lead generation engineering place for Propalms. We are a channel driven organization so we have got system integrators who are trained and well equipped to take up solution in the market. For India we have a national distributor iValue Info Solutions and we have approximately 60 system integrators across country which are signed through iValue and are positioning our solutions at the corporate as well as SME level.

Our go to market strategy is predominantly channel specific but in terms of generating awareness and leads we also do have a PR and marketing team in house who takes care of designing content and got a lead generation team in house who does telecalling for different verticals, different segments for different products and they identify requirements across these verticals and then we initiate those requirements, take it to a certain stage, and then we handed over to our channel partners or system integrators.

Do you find challenges in tapping the verticals?

Tapping these verticals is not a challenge for us as we are a technology driven organization and also we are clear about the value proposition for our customer. We have a clear cut value proposition which well defined. Targeting vertical is certainly not a concern area but brand awareness is one thing which we are focusing to increase it in the country. As a brand we are relatively low profile brand in India so that’s one area which we are trying to address.

From the channel perspective we are using national distributor for creating the brand awareness across the country. We are also doing channel and marketing events, road shows with leading partners, will complete channel programs and giving some of the benefits to channel partner that is something we are doing on channel front.

Where is the growth coming from?

The growth is coming from application virtualization space and we see the vertical growing. Probably 5 year back app virtualization was used by large enterprises but over last few years application virtualization has been penetrated in the SME segment. We see lot of growth in the SME segment in the virtualization space and at the same time the projects like BYOD, mobility are the new technology in the market so these areas are bringing more opportunity for business in enterprise and corporate segment as well.

What are your channel strategies?

We are driving our channel program through distributors across the country. We have got certain system integrators who target the virtualization space, some targets the enterprise market, some targets high performance computing space. We have a set of system integrators who take forward our security offerings. There is a range of channel partners who cater to different market needs and industry verticals.

We run channel enablement program across different cities, we do certification program, channel event are also organized, and we do high tea events for channel customers which is an ongoing process. We also have channel incentive program where we have different level of partnership and at each level of partnership there is different incentives, different targets offered to the channel partners.

How is the market for your solutions in India?

Market has been growing over last few years with terms like mobility, BYOD, players like android, iPhones, windows mobile coming in the enterprise segment market has been good for us. We foresee the growth continues for at least another 4 years.

What are your offerings for enterprise?

Virtualization is a big thing which is happening at the enterprise space. Certainly virtualization and enterprise growing security we offer. We are offering end to end solutions for customer virtualization need. We have complete suite of solutions to offer for enterprise.