Kaspersky Eyes Upcountry..

Through its national distributor, Sakri IT Solutions, Kaspersky is eying growth for its single-user antivirus products in tier-2 and -3 cities in 2012. Besides reshuffling existing partners, Sakri will appoint Platinum partners in tier-2 and Gold partners in tier-3 cities. Plans are afoot to improve post-sales support even in the remotest corners of India. On its part, Kaspersky will appoint channel managers in all state capitals. Affirming the development, Jagannath Patnaik, Director, Channel Sales, Kaspersky Lab, South Asia, said, “We realized that we were weak in post-sales, and partners had also complained that our toll-free number was always engaged. Based on this feedback we have created a mandate for each new appointee to train one person in technical and pre-sales for Gold, and two persons for Platinum. Sakri will also increase the number of support engineers from the current 30 to 50.” Kaspersky will leverage on the popularity of its brand ambassador, Sachin Tendulkar. “Sachin’s popularity is immeasurable across India, and we will leverage it in upcountry locations to create brand awareness and recognition among customers there. We will continue promoting cricket tournaments for computer dealer associations across India. We have promoted such competitions among IT associations in Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Pune, Chandigarh and Mumbai. We will cover more cities this fiscal,” Patnaik stated. In a bid to protect partners across all layers, Sakri has also brought subtle changes to the Partner Recognition and Incentive Management Application. For example, Gold and Silver partners will have to buy products from their local Platinum partner. Explained Patnaik, “As an incentive, Sakri will introduce schemes regularly for each partner level. A Gold or Silver partner would be able to earn 10-35 percent as sales incentive. The Platinum partner would earn a bonus for meeting targets each quarter.”