What is your core strength as a leader?
Kaspersky Lab has been built, and we always say this, with the unrelenting support it gets from all its partners. Engaging with them is an important step in engaging with our end-customers. Our business model is 100% channel focused. We do not do any business directly. Majority of our activities are focused on enabling channels to sell more including marketing initiatives, training etc. In that sense, you can say that we attribute a significant portion of our investments into strengthening the channel network and increasing our engagement with channels.
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“One of the biggest contributor to the success of Kaspersky has been our partners. It is because of partners like VR Infotech that we’ve been able to build a strong network across the region.”
Altaf Halde
Managing Director
Kaspersky Lab (South Asia)
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What are your future plans to further grow the channel market in 2017 – any particular strategy from geography or vertical perspective are you planning?
In 2017 we will continue to focus on our non-endpoint offerings and we will do channel marketing activities around it. We plan to equip our existing partners to sell more of our non-end point offerings. We have already started doing sales and technical trainings across India with the help of our distributors. We have also introduced an interesting incentive program to encourage our partners to sell more of Kaspersky non-endpoint offerings. The partners have already tasted success and have earned big rewards; they foresee increasing revenue in Kaspersky Lab business.
What would be your message for aspiring partners?
We work very closely with all our channel partners. They have contributed to our growth in the region. Channel Partners need to be more closely connected and possess more knowledge of the product they are selling. Partners will always have an upper hand in the sales cycle, if they are more informed on the solutions and the Industry in general. In our case, partners need to be security experts and play a proactive role in suggesting to customers the future roadmap of security and protection of their IT infrastructure assets and corporate/consumer’s data.
