Green IT is a big thrust for us

In the current economic scenario, what is your view of

the Indian market?



Globally, its been a very interesting year. From what was a very gloomy

period four quarters ago, we are now beginning to see light at the end of the

tunnel. In India however, we grew by more than double of our company growth. As

a market India is very big, and we have to be succesfull here. Adoption of new

technologies is higher and faster here, and India is a big learning platform for

us.

What were some of the key lessons that Autodesk learnt

from the economic slowdown?



One of the most important things we did during this period was to take a

step back to undesrtand our customers bettter, our partners better, and take

stock of the industry. The idea was to take their inputs back and try to improve

our existing products and enhance our portfolio. That has been a significant

activity. This was important not just for us, but for our custmers too. This has

helped us in getting and acquiring new technologies.

If India is such an important market for Autodesk, what

are going be your focus areas?



The sectors that we will be pursuing aggresively include utilities, telecom,

government, automotive, and education. Green IT is a big thrust area for us

globally. In India we have decided to work with the CII on their various green

environment initiatives. We have eighty partners accross India. We will enhance

our efforts and plans to increase partners profitability, and capacity to deploy

our solutions in tier-2 and 3 cities. For India we want to continue our q-o-q

growth which is double of that of our company.

As the Indian market grows, two big challenges for a

company like Autodesk are awareness about your products, and awareness about

piracy. What is you game plan here?



Unlicensed users contnue to be our largest user base. And we want to convert

these pirated users into legal Autodesk users. Also, we are invloved with a lot

of colleges and universities for access and adoption strategy for Autodesk

products and technologies. Allthough the education sector is a big market, we

see these activities as long term activities which will eventually help us in

business, and our customers with better engineers.

Ibrahim Ahmad



ibrahima@cybermedia.co.in