Data Security has been gaining increasing importance in boardrooms across different sectors in the country. WinMagic, on the back of some important wins and a reinforced partner ecosystem, gears up to hit it big in the Indian encryption market.
WinMagic provides application aware intelligent key management for encryption with easy-to-use data security solutions. The company has been a market leader in encryption business for over twenty years. Although a relatively new player in India market, WinMagic has a number of key partnerships globally with the likes of HP, Lenovo, IBM etc. which should work in its favor venturing into India. Mark Hickman, COO, WinMagic remarks, “We are very focused in what we do. We have a lot of expertise in the area being the leader in innovation in pushing the envelope in the marketplace and coming out with pre-built capabilities. Now we’ve moved into cloud as well and are the first ones to support all types of OS from Windows and IoS to Mac and Linux. We see how it is critical.”
On the ground in in India, WinMagic has already set up the infrastructure and is raring to take the market by storm projecting a 400% increase in domestic business in the country. “India is an emerging market for us. It’s the fastest growing market in the region. Our pipeline is growing leaps and bounds. We’ve got a sizeable team here and we are adding to it all the time.”
[quote font=”tahoma” font_size=”13″ font_style=”italic” color=”#262626″ bgcolor=”#f2f2f2″]“We’ve got our distributor setup and the goal is to really attack the marketplace. We want to quadruple our business this year.”
Mark Hickman
COO
WinMagic
[/quote]
Digitization and proliferation of devices has upped the demand for data security in businesses and organizations. As enterprises and their boards start taking security and encryption seriously, WinMagic is poised to make the most of it. “Security has become a big issue in India now which is helping us get visibility in the marketplace. The SMB market has been gaining significant traction as data security becomes more of a concern and is highlighted. SMBs are looking at this as a key inhibitor to their growth.”
WinMagic works with managed, opportunity based partners. Currently the company has close to 25 focused partners driving the regular business and has trained approximately ten more in each of the operational regions to increase its spread. Mark believes it is important in partnerships it is important that you share the pain of the partners. He says, “We work both ways. We have set contracts with partners, special pricing to work with them. It is very important that people in the channel make money.”
On getting the interest of the channel, Mark says, “The key is getting the interest and excitement of the partner ecosystem. Initially, it was difficult as we wanted the channel to pick us up but we’ve picked up steam now with some improvement in our business model. We are seeing that partners look at us as a tool to improve their links with the customer. That helps us as we provide a solution which increases their customer ties as well as margins.”
In terms of India market in 2017, Mark expects the revenue to grow significantly for WinMagic, “We are expecting a real coming out party with our share in the Indian market. Our team is close to some very large wins. We have shown the market that we are the solution to choose.” With the initial infrastructure all set and a respectable partner base, WinMagic is looking at 2017 as the year when it makes its mark in India. “We’ve got our distributor setup and the goal is to really attack the marketplace. We want to quadruple our business this year. We’ll be adding more people to increase our support organization. Towards the yearend, we look to build a strategic plan to really go after the government sector. We have major footprints in government sectors in US, Canada, Singapore and Japan. The government segment is big for us, but we need to build our presence in India on the commercial business first.” Demographically, WinMagic plans to focus on the tier 1 market for 2017. “Depending on growth, scalability and market coverage, we’ll be looking to get into the tier 2 markets next year,” adds Mark.
Finally
As WinMagic looks set to expand its partner ecosystem this year, Mark appears bullish about the growth prospects. “When we go against competition, we very rarely loose. If you look at purely which product is better, we are very confident that we can win.” As a direct message to prospective partners Mark remarks, “Work with us and we will make you successful and very profitable. Our partners will have full support of our organization. Our technical team is here to ensure that the partners are trained and supported on all opportunities. We plan to go in on very large opportunities in Mumbai, Bangalore and New Delhi with ten thousand seats. We’ve made the investments and built a team up so that we can make the partners successful.”
