IT management company GoTo has around 20 per cent of its R&D headcount in India, said company CEO Rich Veldran. Of the total global headcount of 2,800, the US-based company has 269 employees in the country, including for R&D and other functions operating from Bangalore.

“We have a model where we do research and development throughout the globe, but about 20 per cent of our resources are in India. The teams play in some product lines that define us. From a market standpoint, India is critical to our strategy and where I’m trying to take the company. Some important partners are the Global Systems Integrators (GSIs), primarily based in India,” Veldran explained.

GSI Partners like Infosys, Cognizant, TCS, Tech Mahindra, and LTIMindtree are on the cutting edge of innovation in tech services, with GoTo fitting into their ecosystem as a tool to service their customers, he said. The CEO added that while no back office work happens in India, the company looks at the country for R&D talent.

Biggest market

For GoTo, whose revenue is around a billion dollars, North America brings is the biggest market. However, one of its fastest-growing areas is Latin America, he said. “We work through partners quite a lot because of a great partner network there. Europe is a substantial market for us and, we play in APAC as well. India is a unique opportunity on many fronts, both with the local business and the global reach. One of the most important markets from a global standpoint is India,” Veldran stated.

“We say we play more in the small and medium-sized businesses space, but in IT services, we scale up to the enterprises, which is why we’re a good fit for GSIs with our product ‘Rescue’. That market is still a growth market,” he said.

The opportunity to partner with GSIs and BPOs is vast, Veldran observed. “They touch more companies globally than we do. What we do is something they don’t have to spend time on; they’re focused on providing services and not necessarily on building tools. Every company has its role and a unique value it brings. Ours is to build the greatest tools for companies, and the easier it is to reach those customers, the better. Partnership networks are a big focus of our strategy.”

GoTo has over 100,000 customers in India and nearly one million globally. It has over 2,000 new partners in the country, out of a global total of over 14,000.

Key industries for the company include business process outsourcing (BPOs), business process e-solutions (BPeS), education, healthcare, manufacturing, the BFSI sector, and GSIs.