Adobe's India bet: banks, retail and media

In an interview with CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan, Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe talked about his company’s growth triggers and Adobe’s expansion plans in India.

Below is the verbatim transcript of Shantanu Narayen's interview with Shereen Bhan on CNBC-TV18.Q: What’s the year looking like ahead?A: We had a great Q1 and I think the transition is behind us, the move from perpetual to subscription and digital marketing also, the new area of growth for us continues to do well. We continue to see people and businesses all around the world focused on digital disruption and technology. So as long as we continue to execute, it feels like the opportunity is ahead of us.Q: Let me ask you about India because you have been a frequent visitor there. Any more expansion plans as far as India is concerned?A: We actually have been growing quite a bit we have that new facility that is now in Noida as well as Bangalore. As the company grows, we continue to have disproportionate growth in India and I think what has always differentiated Adobe in India is we do everything from intellectual property creation all the way to customer satisfaction, but while we don’t have numbers that we are sharing because we are in the middle of year, we continue to grow pretty aggressively in India.Q: You are clearly bullish on what I would call the experienced economy and that is what you are betting on at this point in time. What does that going to mean in terms of actionables over the next 12-18 months for instance and what is the kind of addressable market that you hope to go after?A: We say that total addressable market for Adobe is now approximately USD 48 billion. So it is a huge opportunity but think of it, you have a financial institutions in India maybe ICICI and others, they are going to completely use mobile to change the experience they deliver for their customers all of what is happening in retail where new companies are disrupting the incumbent retail stores. I can go on and on and on media and publishing, your viewership, increasingly LTE wanting to see your show on mobile devices and digital India in terms of the government also warning to provide citizen facing services. So we just look at it and say if we can deliver a technology platform where the customer is at the centre of the experience and reorient how a business thinks about it, every company is going to re-platform their technology stack.Q: You were talking about the government and you spent time with Prime Minister Modi when he was here in the valley. What is your sense about the Start-up India mission and the Start-up India plan, how confident do you feel about that. What is your sense about where the eco-system is in India today? Are there companies there that you would like to bet on. You have been very acquisitive, continue to be aggressive, are there companies there that you would consider betting on? A: The first thing that has certainly happened is that the kind of access to capital and access to intellectual property that used to be uniquely Silicon Valley is now a global phenomenon. So, the Prime Minister is wise in trying to not just encourage large industries but to encourage the creation of new industries.I think mobile is going to represent a huge opportunity. However the start-up situation in India mirrors the start-up situation here where you have a little bit of frothiness at times, you have a little bit of great successes at times but the gene is out of the bottle. I think more and more people are going to want to start companies in India because they know a neighbour or a friend or somebody who has been at successful start-ups. So, I am an optimist.Q: Acquisitions possibly?A: The start-up situation in India has focused when it was first all about services, that was the service economy. The second set has been more business to consumers. Everything from Ola to Snapdeal to Flipkart, I don't think we have seen as much start-up activity on the product side. So, I think and maybe it is just a phase of evolution, it was services, it was semi-conductors, now it is consumer services. If it does become enterprise software we will be all in if we find interesting things.Q: We are going to see a change here in the US, the Presidential race is going to be an exciting one, what is that going mean perhaps as far as India is concerned and the relationship between the two countries specifically technology. You hear the usual rhetoric around Presidential elections on outsourcing and so on and so forth. Do you believe that there could perhaps be a change in case its Donald Trump in the White House?A: I hope whatever change is a change for the positive. The relationship between the two countries, the affinity for people from India to the US and vice-versa  has never been stronger. If you look at the success of the Indian community in Silicon Valley hopefully that is something that US will continue to build on.I hope there aren’t policies that get introduced that impact that but it feels like the momentum and with the Prime Minister being as aggressive, the fact that he came to the valley sends a huge signal of how important he thinks technology is. I would say in Silicon Valley we tend to work around, innovate around short term policies might exists. So, I am optimistic but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.       Q: You one of the few Indian origin CEOs in the valley and now you have company and plenty of it, there is your classmate from HPS Satya Nadella at Microsoft, there is Sundar Pichai and a bunch of others as well. What do you think is working, how do you explain this?A: First I gave tremendous credit to the American system where opportunity is available to people from all around the world, so it’s as much recognition and reflection of the valley as it is perhaps of the hard work that we have put in, but I was certainly inspired by other Indians who “broke through the barriers or the ceilings that existed and hopefully there are people like us who are then passing that on as inspiration to others”, but I think it’s here to stay, the fact that we all went to great schools and our fluency in English and the resourcefulness that we had to demonstrate in India in order to get anything done may be there is some benefit to that after all.Q: What would you be most concerned about if I were to ask you about the big risk and the big opportunity today, what would those be? How are they stack up?A: I think the big opportunity continues to be technology is going to transform industry, mobile, cloud, social and big data. It used to be that we have one of those tectonic shifts in software. It’s unparallel that we see all four of them coming at the same time, so in terms of an opportunity without a doubt that is the biggest opportunity. In terms of the risk it always is the short-sighted policies or systems that get created that prevent this innovation from happening and require even more jugaad and resourcefulness, but it feels like the momentum is only going to continue, so I am very optimistic both about the state of what’s happening in India and clearly about silicon valley everybody has written us off a few years ago and we are back with a bang.