Exclusive : Umang Bedi, Adobe's MD tells us about the company's darkest moments and the 'soul-searching' that brought it back on track

A few years back, the easiest and most preferred way to have gotten hold of Photoshop, Lightroom or any other Adobe desktop applications was to download it off the internet.

Piracy was the norm and almost everyone made the most of it.

For the company, however, it was their greatest enemy and weakness.

At one point, Adobe was losing about a billion dollars to piracy. This, despite them being the market leaders and having to deal with little or no competition.

But, not any longer.

Cut to 2015 where Adobe commands the 68th position in the Best Global Brand rankings carried out by Interbrand.

The company’s Digital Media Annualized Recurring Revenue grew more than $2.35 billion exiting and their flagship offering- Creative Cloud now has over 4.5 million subscribers.

“If you notice, you’ll see we hardly spend any money on advertising or marketing. Our products are great. They do the work for us,” says Umang Bedi, Adobe’s Managing Director for South Asia.

But how did the company get there?

“It took some soul searching,” he laughingly adds.

The journey however, wasn't that simple.

The company reevaluated their licensing polices and worked tirelessly towards transforming its biggest challenge (piracy) into one of their strengths (affordability).

“Four years ago, owning Adobe Photoshop would cost an individual Rs 65,000. Most people couldn’t afford it and thus took the shortcut- get a pirated copy. That wasn’t the only problem. There also the issue of customers lapping up the digital space. And, we realized we didn’t provide them that space,” admits Bedi, who took over in 2011.

The understanding that Adobe was falling behind not only in curbing piracy but also on providing up to date technology hit the company hard.

“We turned the house upside now. By the end of 2013, Adobe shut down its licensing process, first in India and then globally. We switched to cloud subscription. And, now you can get your hands on Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom together for Rs 499. That’s a steal deal,” he adds.

Looking back, he thinks the switch was inevitable. It was just a matter of when.

The consumer has adapted to the digital space at a rapid speed, he says. “Today, Digital marketing has become a boardroom conversation as opposed to four years ago when tech companies were casually discussing it,” claims Bedi.

According to Bedi, if an individual wishes to buy a phone now, he will first go online and research about it and then ask his friends online. Only then will he buy a phone.

“It’s impossible to ignore that kind of impact. Thus, our transformation also focused on Adobe boasting of a creative cloud, (every video/audio find its place here) a document management cloud (includes easily the most used product- the PDF) and a space dedicated to digital marketing, which sees over 32 trillion transactions every year,” he asserts.

The result is thus- As of now, Adobe is the only company to offer consumers ‘end-to-end content.’

“Adobe helps you make it, mobilize it and monetize it. We tell you both the data and the content story,” says Bedi.

Their effort hasn’t gotten unnoticed, especially by the Indian government itself.

Elaborating on the topic, Bedi reveals, “The entire process of document submission for the Ministry of Corporate Affairs is done exclusively on Adobe. Even acquiring a passport or a driving license makes use of Adobe. We’re also working with the Gujarat and Adobe Acrobat is deployed in around 28,000 villages in India in order to make application processes easier for villagers”

Incidentally, Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayan was also part of the Digital India delegation and Bedi hopes the company can be a strategic partner in helping the Indian government revolutionize India as a digitally empowered country.

“On paper, the concept of Digital India has been brilliantly strategized and marketed. If the challenges of time-scale and scale rise and aptly managed, this could be a game-changer,” Bedi concludes.

Image credit: Printweek.in