Bangalore-headquartered eMudhra works in the area of digital transformation. Its products and services especially focused on digital identity and cybersecurity are used by more than 500 enterprise including top 45 banks across different geographies. It has issued over 40 million digital signatures to customers in India.
For the company, the 2018 was a very eventful year. It witnessed major expansion in India and a significant growth in the global markets. In addition to UAE, Kenya, Bahrain, and Mauritius, the firm has build a channel network of 120 partners across 38 countries stretching across Middle East, Africa, Far East, Latin America, & USA with its own offices in 5 countries.
In an exclusive interview with TechObserver.in's Shalini Shukla, Arvind Srinivasan, senior vice-president – strategic initiatives & global markets at eMudhra shares his views on how the year 2018 has been and company's plans for 2019.
“Having set a strong global base, strengthened our solution stack, and scaled our team, we have strong expectations from 2019. In 2019, we are confident of tapping into the large SME market in India to drive paperless transformation through innovative business models that are legally compliant in India. Further, the establishment of our own globally trusted root would give us an opportunity to sell SSL and other certificates not only in India and globally,” said Srinivasan.
How has been eMudhra business this year? What have been your major achievements?
2018 was a very eventful year for eMudhra. It was the year that marked our expansion abroad outside of India. A significant part of our global expansion occurred during 2018. At the beginning of the year, we were only present in UAE, Kenya, Bahrain, and Mauritius. However, during the course of year, we have expanded to build a channel network of 120 partners across 38 countries stretching across Middle East, Africa, Far East, Latin America, & USA with our own offices in 5 countries.
Apart from this, this has been the year where eMudhra has been recognized as an important player in the PKI industry and an Indian organization that competes at a global level. Our staff members are part of the United Nations CEFACT body to drive thought leadership around digital transformation, our chairman was elected as the Chairman of the Asia PKI consortium, our organization was invited and is currently an executive member of the cloud signature consortium.
The other major achievement is the significant progress and near completion of eMudhra's globally trusted roots for issuance of SSL certificates, user certificates, code signer certificates, and other certificates that are trusted by Adobe and the browsers. eMudhra has the privilege of being the only India-based private sector company to achieve this milestone.
What are your expectations in 2019?
Having set a strong global base, strengthened our solution stack, and scaled our team, we have strong expectations for 2019. In 2019, we are confident of tapping into the large SME market in India to drive paperless transformation through innovative business models that are legally compliant in India. Further, the establishment of our own globally trusted root would give us an opportunity to sell SSL and other certificates not only in India and globally.
From a market perspective, we feel that the timing could not be any better. With a strong push towards digitization globally, and good penetration into India, we expect 2019 to be a year where proliferation of our certificates and applications would grow at a higher rate than 2018. In 2019, we expect to expand to western markets, drive deeper penetration in select verticals such as Education & Healthcare globally, and focus on becoming the de-facto paperless office application not just for large enterprises but for all smaller entities across India.
What are the few trends that will impact your industry?
Data privacy laws in India and abroad will have a significant impact on the relevance PKI, digital identity, and digital transformation. The general shift towards paperless and the Government of India's facilitation of robust digital signature models will empower our vision for a paperless SME market. Also, strong identity governance regulations globally would fuel greater importance to effective management of identity in a digital form to enable seamless transactions in a competitive manner.
In addition, the evolution of IoT and Smart Cities and the need for secure communication in these ecosystems will have a direct impact on PKI and cryptography. Similarly, I feel, the increasing focus on Blockchain experimentation paired with the need for legally valid transactions will force innovation in cryptography and PKI.
