Adobe Global CEO Shantanu Narayen in an exclusive conversation with CNBC-TV18's Kritika Saxena spoke about Adobe's expansion plans in India and how it is leveraging its artificial technology to expand its footprint in the country.
Below is the excerpt of the interview.
Q: I am going to start by asking you, in 2015 when we met, I remember you had said that India in emerging geographies will be the next evolution platform for most tech companies. In the last one and a half years, what has the experience been? Where is India now, as things stand in Adobe\'s global footprint?
A: It continues to play a very important role in two meaningful ways. The first is the talent and the skillset that exists here in India and so, we are a product company, we are an innovation company and you look for the best people all around the world. So I think our engineering organisation here continues to have an impact.
But also, the big movement that we see is consumer expectations that are changing and clearly the biggest revolution that has happened was the mobile revolution and India is again leading the mobile revolution in terms of it being the pre-eminent platform for dealing with digital. So, if you can address the needs of customers who are the most advanced or have the most insight, then we were doing something right.
Q: I going ask you about a broader question and then we will get India specific. About five years ago, we used to say that India is still behind in digital revolution about how the technology starts with Korea, Japan, USA, Western Europe and then finally, penetrates into India. Do you believe that has changed now?
A: We were here in December for my niece's wedding and as part of that, the entire family went to Ranthambore which was this amazing vacation and everything that I did there was digital.
Q: Really? How?
A: Yes.
Q: You are going digital while being on holiday?
A: Yes, the airline tickets and everything that we did with respect to the airlines. So, I think your interfacing with companies and what you do, whether it is social, whether it is on business, whether it is for pleasure, that is where the entire revolution is happening and India is no exception.
Q: So, India is ready to grab on to the global digital revolution, be it 5G, be it artificial intelligence, be it virtual reality on a very customer to customer basis?
A: I think so. When we look at what is happening with respect to digital, the first is enterprises interfacing with their customers on digital, that is certainly happening. When you look at what Make My Trip is doing or Flipkart with e-commerce, India is clearly one of the leaders in that. Then you look at entertainment. If people are watching the IPL or if they are watching live sports, chances are again you are doing that digitally. So, the consumer expectations are truly a universal phenomenon and India is absolutely seizing it.
The other area that I would highlight is what is happening with digital India. And as people are thinking about what happened with the equivalent of the US social security and everybody getting a card or an ID to be able to do interface, what is happening with electronic signatures. So, that fundamental move to digital is really universal.
Q: Give us a sense on the expansion, you already have about 5200 employees in India, 30 percent of your R&D is done from here. By how much can we see that scaling up even I f you were to take a 3-5 year horizon?
A: What is amazing is every time I come to India I am told that we are running out of facilities and spaces. So, something must be done right. As you know we have a massive presence both in Noida where we started the company. Then we had presence in Bangalore and that just continues to grow but for us it has never been about sheer numbers, it has always been about quality. When you look at the software company that is doing product unlike a services company, our numbers - order of magnitude USD 7 billion in revenue, USD 65 billion market cap which would put us in the forefront of any tech company in the world but we are only 16000 employees. So, for us it is all about finding the right people, the right skillset and that is why we continue to see dramatic growth here in India.
Q: What has the growth been like if you could give us a sense given that the last two years have been significant for digital growth in India, how has the growth been and what is the outlook in the next two years?
A: As long as Adobe continues to grow at the rate at which we are, I actually don't have the number at the top of my head because that is not how we think. We think about skillsets but if we have doubled our employee population all around the world I think we have probably grown faster in India than anywhere else in the world. So, hopefully that gives you a sense with the 5000 number the kind of growth that we have seen in India.
Q: What about in terms of revenues and contribution to the entire global pie?
A: Revenues we don't break out by India. So, I can't give you those numbers but if you look at what has happened with the cloud revenue, we have two large businesses that we report on. We report on digital media and we report on digital marketing. I think it is fair to say that in digital media the growth was really happening back in the US and UK because that is when we transformed from the desktop based business to the cloud based business. I think what the impact in India has been is that larger enterprises have certainly adopted the enterprise term licence agreement and create a cloud very successfully. So, I think we have been very successful.
On the individual side where people are using our products, piracy still continues to be an issue but the fact that it is more affordable, we are seeing more growth than it was in the traditional. So, we are hopeful that as long as media and content becomes important, India is going to just continue to grow.
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