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Recently,
has
announced the launch of their anti-virus software PURE, a corporate
product line for business customers. Along with it they also
announced the names of the four new national distributors for its
enterprise business in India. The announcement also meant that they
terminated the contract with their Hyderabad-based distributor Zoom
Technologies.
When The DQ Week
questioned Zoom about the termination, MH Noble, MD, Zoom said, “Zoom
launched Kaspersky in India five years ago, because Kaspersky wanted
penetration in the Indian market. We made them understand that the
price offered, has to be affordable for the Indian consumers.
Accordingly the product was priced low. In spite of this original
understanding, Kaspersky hiked their prices from Rs 200 to Rs 1,000
in five years. I always wanted to deliver good quality products to my
consumer at an affordable price. Kaspersky fell back on the
commitment made by them to us by hiking the price steeply. When we
protested, initially Kaspersky stopped supplying to us and then
terminated our Distributor Agreement, even though the agreement was
valid upto December 2010.”
Ramesh Kotni of Tracker
Solution, another partner from Delhi who was a distributor for
Kaspersky's Internet security products for the past three years,
claims his contract too was subsequently terminated.“Once they
terminated Zoom, they partnered with Sakri which created a new
channel base. They did not go through the old channels with whom they
had done with good volume of business” said Kotnis.
Kaspersky had signed Zoom
to sell their total Internet Security in India every month through
retail channels five years ago. Though the termination has been done
more than four months, the question that arises is, whether or not it
was too abrupt a step by Kaspersky, considering that Zoom is also
partially responsible for the success of its Kaspersky products in
the Indian market, as verified by the partner community.
Also, Mumbai-based TAG
claimed that, Kaspersky had never informed them about the termination
of Zoom. “We did business with Kaspersky from August 2009- January
2010 and were associated with Zoom for the sales of the product. We
were surprised when we came to know that we had to work for Sakri,
who was appointed by Kaspersky. In fact, being a small company we
have eight to nine branches; unlike Sakri which had none. And we were
officially never informed by Kaspersky about the termination of
Zoom,” said Vikas Gupta, Proprietor, TAG.
It seems that this
termination was quite unexpected since Zoom was equally responsible
for the launch of Kaspersky products; moreover they had to bear the
brunt of the confusion due to the unexpected termination in the end.
Add to this, the track
record of Kaspersky products has not always been faultless. Kaspersky
had deployed their anti-virus solution at the Indian Railways three
years ago, which has now been replaced by an alternative product.
Apparently Indian Railways did not go for the renewal of Kaspersky
anti-virus because of performance issues. According to industry
sources, a few other Kaspersky renewals too are not happening, with
the organizations going for other international products. In Mumbai,
many universities and other corporates too are contemplating to shift
from Kaspersky to other vendors. When The DQ Week tried contacting
Kaspersky, it was informed that the spokesperson was busy and could
not respond.