German CAD company Graebert starts sales operations in India

German-based Graebert, a leading Computer Aided Design (CAD) software company, is all set to start off its channel business in India, after being present in the country for the last 15 months with having a full-fledged R&D center in Noida. Now the company wants to establish its own brand ARES CAD, as a local national player in the Indian CAD market. The company will be starting its commercial business from July, meanwhile it is building its conventional value added resellers base, as well as online channel.

In an exclusive interaction /The DQ Week/, Wilfried Graebert, CEO, Graebert CAD software informed its journey so far, he said, "Our flagship product ARES is the fastest growing CAD software in the world, but we don't have visibility in the market because we tried as a smaller company to fight against big CAD companies like Autodesk. Thus when we had a closer look at the competition, we figured out that joining these bigger companies is much easier than having an easy access to the market, so we partnered with a couple of big companies like Dassault Systemes SolidWorks, Corel Corporation and many others as white labeling OEMs. Currently, we are working with leading OEMs and compliment their 3D offerings (Draftsight) with our 2D offerings."

Currently, Draftsight of Dassault Systemes SolidWorks has more then 4 mn installed base in the last 2 years. It has 30 such active OEM partnership, who sell their product under different names. In the market like US and Europe, Graebert does mainly white labeling business. But in India, the company has a wholly-owned subsidiary named Graebert Software and plans to establish its own brand in the market.

Graebert has a headcount of 30 people in India, since the beginning of this year, when it decided to commence its local sales operation from Noida."We think now our next phase is to establish our sales channels for our product. Since we are having our back-office and local support center, it was a logical move for us to have our own brand, so that we can get more visibility in the market. Beginning of the year, we decided to hire sales people, now we are setting up our sales channel. We want to have both traditional channel and internet channel in India," Graebert added.

To head sales operation in India, the company has recently appointed Surya Sarda as director, marketing and business development. Prior to joining Graebert, he worked at Autodesk and Microsoft Visor.

While explaining the company's GTM strategy, Sarda said, "Our back-office is 15 months old, now we are starting our sales channel. We are building our channel from the scratch, signing up the partners from the CAD industry, who develop CAD products or sell CAD products. We have contacted 200 independent software developers (ISVs), but we will sign-up active 20-30 partners in next 2 months. Alternatively, we are starting our e-store and also creating local Apps-store. Since, our product is platform-based, hence we want to closely work with ISVs who have an expertise in building vertical applications in the field of infrastructure, GIS mapping, construction, mechanical and manufacturing."

It has already started Proof of Concept at IIT Delhi and Kharagpur. This year, Graebert will be getting an award from International CAD Society.

The company's next big strategy to make a fast entry in India is its pricing strategy. Sarda mentioned, "We see India as a bigger market, as more and more people are moving from illegal CAD software to legal. The illegal licensing is getting converted into the low cost legal CAD. Hence to overcome piracy issue and to attract Indian customers, we are working out to offer special Indian pricing model. We will have both full packaged sale of software as well as 1 and 2 year subscription based model. The full packaged product is Rs 40,000 per license, which is 50-70% cheaper than the global price in India, wherein we are working out with the subscription pricing, but we are looking at a very low pricing to make it available as an affordable full fledged CAD solution for engineering students, consulting engineers."

For the subscription business, it is looking at online channels like e-zone and flipkart for smaller companies. On the other hand, the ISVs will sell the full packaged solutions to the corporates and government.

"We want to establish as a local brand in India with help from the local support. We will become independent from currency exchange rates. We want to move forward and want to do more in India," Graebert.

First Published in DQ Week http://www.dqweek.com/dq-week/news/186682/graebert-commences-sales-operation-india