1.     What is the big focus for Graebert in India?
Graebert has the ambition to establish itself as a leader for dwg-based CAD software in India with ARES Commander (for Windows, Mac & Linux) and ARES Touch (Android) products. Graebert is also offering its CAD platform to developers willing to build vertical applications on top of these products.
2.     How big is the CAD on tablet market in India and how do you plan to target it..?
Smartphones, tablets and 2-in-1 devices are growing very fast. Tablets were only launched in 2010 but their sales are now outperforming laptop sales and IDC predicts that adoption rate for tablets in commercial enterprises will double between 2014 and 2015. In Western Europe, IDC says that 2 companies out of 3 have already deployed tablets. In India there is also a clear trend toward smartphones and tablets. IDC recently reported that in Q4 2015 smartphones represent 35% of sales versus 65% for Feature phones, one year earlier it was 22% and 78 respectively. The difference we see in the BRICS countries is that users tend to buy one device to fit all their needs, typically a phablet (screen size (.5″ < 7″) or a tablet with phone capabilities whereas in North America and Europe, customers tend to use a combination of PC and mobile devices. IDC predicts, for example, that the phablets market share in Asia will surge from 16% in 2014 to 34% in 2018 and the same report says that India is leading this growth. It is therefore very clear that, ARES Touch for Android being the only full-featured CAD solution for Android, Graebert will have a significant competitive advantage to reach all these customers that are now replacing their laptop by a tablet or phablet in India. We expect that workers in the office will keep using our desktop versions and that professionals working in the field will see a strong advantage in using ARES Touch for Android. That said, we don’t ask our customers to choose between desktop and mobile, when they buy a license they get licenses for both products.
3.     what is your go to market strategy to push CAD solutions in India..?
Graebert has been strongly investing to become a major player in India. This is one of our first markets in terms of investment and also one of the fastest growing. We established a branch in India with a dedicated sales team covering the entire country and one of Graebert’s three worldwide development centers. Graebert India is building new headquarters in Noida to facilitate its expansion. The strategic partnership with Ingram Micro is also significantly contributing to the growth of Graebert in India.
4.     How important is the channel partner community for pushing CAD solutions..?
We believe the channel partners and our collaboration with Ingram Micro as national distributor is fundamental to helping us reach a pan-Indian distribution and provide the level of service that our customers expect. ARES Commander is probably the only alternative to AutoCAD that is benefiting from such a large distribution in India and we believe the channel partners distributing the Graebert CAD Software are offered very good business conditions to build a profitable business in the long term.
5.     How do you look at the competition on the CAD market on tablets in India…?
ARES Touch for Android is the first full-featured dwg-based CAD solution for Android. We don’t see any direct competition because most of the applications available are either free viewers or limited versions aiming at just reviewing drawings. Graebert has a different vision of the market in line with its “Cross-device CAD Experience”. We believe that mobile devices can bring a significant contribution to the productivity of the CAD users and base this analysis on a 15 years experience of mobile CAD as Graebert was the first company to release a CAD Solution on Windows CE in 2000. Tablets will not replace computers any time soon, they are the natural extension of the desktop. That’s why we don’t sell separately ARES Touch for Android and ARES Commander for the desktop but we sell them together as part of the overall user experience: if you buy one you get the other and vice-versa.
ARES Touch has two strong competitive advantages compared to other solutions available. The first one is the number of features supported that is superior and this will also grow faster as our platform is designed to allow easy migration of features from the desktop version. The second advantage is our API that allows developers to use the same programming languages they use for desktop ie Lisp, C++ Tx (our equivalent to ARX) or Java. ARES Touch is the only solution offering an API and this is very important because it will allow developers to customize ARES Touch for specific needs of niche markets where high synergies can be found with mobile technologies. Using the same programming languages helps the developers to easily migrate any existing program created for ARES Commander or AutoCAD on the desktop. Graebert has, for example, previous experience in developing Mobile CAD solutions for Building Surveyors or Kitchen planners. We noticed that the highest productivity gains are reached when Mobile CAD is fully integrated in the workflow with industry-specific features and tight integration with the other tools used in the office (eg the Kitchen planning solution). We want, therefore, to invite the developers to have a look at ARES Touch as the unique CAD platform offering the easiest path to migrate their CAD based applications to mobile.
6.    What are the advantages that Graebert brings for Indian market..?
Graebert is renowned for 30 years for its innovation in the CAD industry and the Graebert CAD technologies are in use by more than 7 million professionals in the World. We believe that this is the result of the strong alliances Graebert could build along the years with Industry leaders and our everlasting passion for CAD. Besides being very competitively priced versus AutoCAD, the Graebert CAD software aims to facilitate the transition for the CAD users with a comprehensive user interface (nothing to learn if you know other CAD common software) and attractive additional features.
Some competitive advantages of ARES Commander include productivity features to speed-up daily tasks such as the Power Trim feature, the dimension palette, the PDF to DWG conversion and more. Graebert is also introducing a very flexible and multi-platform licensing with a new concept “the Cross-device Experience” allowing the same user to install his license on one main computer, all its Android devices and work from other computers as required. ARES Commander is also the first dwg-based CAD Software working on Windows, Mac, Linux and now Android devices with the new ARES Touch included in the ARES Commander subscription.
Last but not least, one of the three development centers working on ARES Commander is located in India. We have therefore a strong infrastructure to support Indian customers, resellers and third-party developers.