No doubt the company has started thinking in the direction and is continuously working on it but it really needs to be more aggressive as Victor Hugo had once said, “there is nothing like a dream to create the future.” Certainly Gupta too is more or less dreaming on the same theme, as he wants to create an independent business for Adobe in India and “if it can be a billion dollar business, then there can’t be anything better that I can think of,” he shares with 4Ps B&M. But then it’s an easy said than done task as there are not many billion dollar software businesses running today across the world. Moreover he shouldn’t forget that the best way to beat your competition, particularly in the IT arena is to come out with a technology, which is far superior to your competitor’s.
That’s surely not impossible for the company which is one of the best places to work for in the country. However, given the hiccups like broadband reach and connectivity in India the task looks a little difficult for Gupta. “The hiccups are just a part of the story but at the macro level we have made huge progress and we will continue to do so,” Gupta disagrees with us. But then Adobe India has definitely been hit by the prevailing slowdown and like others it too has lowered its Q1 forecasts for 2009. Considering this, it would really be a tough time ahead for Adobe to manage competitors that have huge cash chests. However, Gupta doesn’t seems bothered much by the fact and is all gung ho about Adobe’s Indian business. And more importantly, at a time when all the other companies are in love with the pink colour, Adobe India is planning to hire more people than the company did in 2008. Though, the company recently fired 600 people globally, none of them were from India, as it only let go people from where the projects were being shelved. Moreover, “we will continue hiring in India very aggressively and will come out with great sales and marketing strategies. And as the slowdown ends, we will be in a very good position,” claims Gupta.
The company is also exploring the possibility of striking gold in the short run by tagging ads on its products. In fact they are running a pilot with Yahoo! to make it a huge success. Keeping in mind Adobe’s massive reach, the opportunity certainly seems to be huge for it. “Our products are available on almost each and every system in place on earth. So, it is a pretty attractive business for us,” agrees Gupta. And if they can do it in a way that adds value to the advertiser, publisher and user, there is surely an opportunity for Adobe to build its business. Though Adobe doesn’t want to decide its next step unless it ends the currently running pilot but surely, the company is focusing on this area in a more aggressive mode than before. However, when we asked Gupta about the possibility of their new ads business taking over their core software project, he had a very straight forward answer, “The ad business will never replace or displace our core business.”
But considering the ambitious plans that Adobe has for India it’s sure that it’s going to face a lot of challenges in times to come. Though, they have a big ecosystem but Microsoft and Google are not those competitors that can be taken lightly. So, as we moved out of the Adobe office we still doubted Gupta’s dream of making Adobe a billion dollar business in India, but one thing that we were sure of was that the Great Indian IT story was still not over!
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2009
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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