Adobe Systems India over the last two years has gone through many changes, especially around cloud services including selling its services through subscription basis. Faced with the challenges of digital medium, it has recreated its tools and launched a suite of products under Creative Cloud. In less than two years, it has got 1.8 million active subscribers globally. In an interview with Business Line, Naresh Gupta, Senior Vice-President and Managing Director, Adobe Systems India, shares more. Edited excerpts:
What was the need for Adobe to change its business model?
We felt the need to change ourselves otherwise we were scared if we would be left behind and that spurt the need to innovate and create the right kind of product with the right kind of delivery mechanism.
We see large number of new customers who do not have a product because these are the people who say "we are ready to pay $40 or $60 a month than to pay $1,800 in one time. We see strong traction for subscription model."
In 2006, you have announced $200 million investment in India for five years. Has it been done?
Yes, it has been done and we continue to do more with new investments. We have two campuses that are coming online based on that investment – at Noida and Bangalore — which will come up by middle of next year. It will increase some of our capacities. We have around 2,700 people in India and a good part of that is in research and development. Apart from R&D in India, we have many other operations such as IT and support, and backend operations.
How strong is your R&D in India and what innovations have happened out of the Indian centre?
Innovation is our lifeline. For captive centres like us, one of the challenges to differentiate ourselves among all the captive centres Adobe has including the headquarters in San Jose, is to stand out, and the only thing that counts is innovation. We have filed more than 300 patents since we started and a good percentage of patents that Adobe has filed came from India.
The two big areas that we are innovating right now in India campus are – one is related to 3D printing and the other is in e-learning.
What made Adobe chose e-learning as one area to deploy the tools that you have?
One of our big focus areas is how to increase the engagements that students have while taking these courses. Secondly, we have not just kind of saying that the students need to take the course, we are also creating tools and technologies like ‘how do I increase the learnability of the student’.
The benefit is that we have the data for large number of students taking the same course. Therefore, now you are able to integrate all these data and point out what are the problem points, where students get stuck, what kind of problems they get wrong and that is helping the instructors and teachers intervene in real-time.
How is digital marketing doing? How about in India?
We are going after top companies, mid-size companies and many partners. In India, we have some of the large companies as our customers right now. But, we see many opportunities coming in the future, as we are picking up customers with great products and talent.
The amount of time people spend on digital content continues to grow. Corporates are struggling to provide the right kind of experience to their customers when they interact with them through digital means, which usually means that when our customers come to a company website – Facebook or when they talk to social media – how to ensure that they are providing right kind of experiences.
These are all different things that companies are working on that is why we have a consolidated platform what we call ‘digital marketing platform’ and this provides our customer, which is usually chief marketing officers or marketing managers and at times chief revenue officer, to define and control the precise experience their customers would have.
And, then to optimise their marketing spends.