Ashutosh Kapoor, Vice President – Channels and Partner Ecosystem, UiPath India, shares the company’s channel strategies for 2019
Key highlights 2018 and opportunities for 2019
The trend of digital transformation by enterprises has led to many new opportunities for channels. It has led to many channel partners gaining specialisation in one or more of the digital technologies such as cloud, analytics, security, data management, digital workplace, IoT, and mobility amongst others.
This trend will only intensify in 2019. The year would also see channel partners move deeper into some of these areas and provide managed services. There’s also the emergence of SaaS-based application software in areas such as HR, supply chain, and customer experience management.
RPA is a new area where we see lot of opportunities for channel. Just in over a year we have identified and worked with over 60 boutique channel partners who are serving some of the largest Indian enterprises. By its very nature, RPA has got applicability and scope across the enterprise and we work on annual licenses, which makes it for more licenses and renewal of existing licenses. RPA channel partners thus have a very strong growth driver as part of the business model.
Top tech trends for channel community
- RPA has high growth potential and high profit potential. Availability of RPA skills is on the rise and UiPath is a major force behind it.
- IT channel companies have to be aligned with one or more of the cloud ecosystems in the market. Critical opportunities would arise out of these relationships.
- Channel partners will have to seek deeper specialisation in one or more of the emerging areas such as
IoT, AI, RPA, analytics, etc., along with handling infrastructure and security services to be able to completely own the client relationship.
Channel direction for partners
UiPath is 100 per cent focused on channel partners because we firmly believe in being a products and platform company, earning our revenues from product license fees alone. When a customer signs on for RPA, the channel partner is involved right from the start, from the proof-of-concept to implementation to running managed services or center of excellence. Some of our partners also specialise in training.
The RPA industry has been growing in multiples and UiPath is the fastest growing RPA company adding 8-10 customers per day globally. We expect the same growth rate to continue in India during 2019, which translates to huge opportunity for channels. Every UiPath customer opportunity is a channel opportunity. To capitalise on this, our partners should invest in hiring trained RPA resources and business process analysts.
