Mumbai: All-Flash storage company Pure Storage has witnessed a 45% revenue growth this year in India. Pure Storage achieved this growth in a short span of 18 months after it formally entered the Indian market.
Indian market presence and growth
“When we actually dive into the Indian market, this year we have seen a 45% growth in the market here in India. While, we really only been in the market formally for about 18 months,” Mark Jobbins, VP and CTO – Asia Pacific and Japan, Pure Storage said last week during the new FlashArray//XL launch.
“The growth we are seeing in India is across a range of industries. It has been a quiet holistic strategy so its not one particular industry that has driven this (growth). We are seeing success across number of areas,” added Jobbins.
Though the company’s growth has been across most industries, Jobbins pointed that Pure Storage has seen significant progress in the FSI (financial services industry) market and service providers market this year.
Regions like India expect positive growth for enterprise flash storage from healthcare, insurance, and telecommunications verticals across 2021, as per a forecast report from Mordor Intelligence.
India’s growth is primarily due to innovation accelerated by IoT, AI, and big data revealed in the forecast report. Organisations are looking forward to automation technologies and consumption-based pricing.
According to Mordor Intelligence, the global All-Flash Array (AFA) market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 26.3% between 2021 to 2026. The Asia Pacific region including China, Japan and Australia are among the regions with high growth of the flash markets.
Partners in the Indian market
Pure Storage offers its storage products and subscription services around the world including India, through channel partners, distributors, global system integrators (GSI) and cloud providers.
“One of the largest cloud partners that we have in India is UBX Cloud, whilst we have number of the GSIs that are also driving the adoption of Pure in India,” Jobbins told to TechHerald.in
“But basically UBX Cloud is the key ones and Redington being the distributor obviously help us drive business in India as well. So its a little bit mix of local distributors and cloud providers,” added Jobbins.
“We really need to thank our own customers and partners that are really the engine of growth and support for Pure Storage in the Indian market,” commented Jobbins.
Leveraging the $370 million Portworx acquisition
Interestingly, Pure Storage’s business growth in India this year has a lot to do with the $370 million acquisition of Portworx in September 2020. Silicon Valley-based Indian tech startup Portworx is a software-defined storage platform built for containers and microservices for enterprises.
“That huge investment that we are making in the Indian market in the last 18 months is seeing dividend there, where the installed base is increasing and taking more market share within the Indian market,” added Jobbins.
Since the acquisition, Portworx’s strong R&D facility and engineering teams in India is playing a significant role in Pure Storage’ products, go-to-market strategy and overall growth.
Building engineering capabilities in India
“We have engineering teams in different locations. But we are actually building out our engineering capabilities within India. And that’s very pleasing to see the whole model of development teams locally based in India but actually providing products for global go-to-market strategy,” pointed out Jobbins.
“And this is a particularly key strategy for us around containers strategy with Portworx. So it’s good to see the teams not only from go-to-market growth perspective in India but also our engineering team,” he continued.
Growing customer base
The NYSE listed storage technology company has over 9500 customers globally. Pure Storage has increased its customer base to over 9,500 in Q3 FY22 with customer growth of 12% Y-o-Y compared to 8,500 customers in Q3 FY21. It has added 345 new customers in the ended Q3 in November this year.
Over 50% of Fortune 500 organisations around the world, according to Jobbins are now using Pure Storage technology to advance their digital strategy momentum.