Ajay Pande, VP Engineering, Adobe India on
Adobe’s Indian operations, engineering and
design vision
Tell us about the engineering and product design teams
at Adobe India
Adobe India’s engineering and product design teams are based out
of two locations – Noida and Bangalore. We’ve been operating out
of India and exclusively focussing on several products for the past
12 years. Our current engineering headcount for India is 1500.
What kind of talent do you look for while recruiting?
Sheer brightness and brilliance is something that excites us. For
this, we go to the top institutes. For engineering and business
talent, we look for people with passion and love for technology.
The person should be willing to experiment and have the
willingness to learn. We do not prefer people who keep switching
between technologies or someone who is on the run. Adobe
products are benchmarks – always the best. This translates even to
our resources. We get the best whatever be the field. In addition,
we have a strong rotation process, whereby engineers can move on
to the product line of their choice depending on his/her interest.
Which is the most extensive market for Adobe? If US/
Europe, is it still convenient to develop here and market
it abroad?
When it comes to our products, approximately half of it is
consumed in the Americas and the other half comes in Europe
and Japan. We have managed to grow with corresponding growth
in the respective industries. We are excited about this and expect
to continue this trend in the years to come. Adobe Elements
shipped to the world, was developed in India. Overall, Adobe is
not geographic specific. If you compare Adobe with other software
manufacturers, Adobe is clearly the leader. Our products are not
localised to such an extent that their behaviour patterns change.
In fact, whenever our client/customer industries have grown,
Adobe’s stable has grown. For example, in a country such as India,
with the growth of the print industry, InDesign has seen rapid
growth. Similarly with the future moving towards the cloud, Flash
is witnessing growth.
What is signifi cant about Elements?
Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premiere Elements were
recently shipped globally. These product lines were developed
entirely in India. Designers, especially for web and print platforms,
extensively use Photoshop. Similarly, video editors use Adobe
Premiere. Our latest addition, Adobe Elements, is targeted at
hobbyists. Although not as critical as designers and editors,
hobbyists do want their product to appear as professional as
possible. This is where Elements steps in.
Does Adobe do all of its development work, or do
you outsource? Tell us more about it from an Indian
perspective. Also tell us what goes in the whole cycle.
Considering the criticality of our software applications, we
consider this to be our business in all respects, and we carry all
development work ourselves. Although we do have development
partners, we do not outsource any of our development work.
Basically, our product development cycle or product lifecycle
begins with what is called a seed idea. A seed idea could come
from anyone, be it an engineer or a manager or a director. When
someone has an idea, they can communicate the idea by means
of forums dedicated for this purpose. This is known as the
incubation board. While the idea grows there, it is also reviewed.
This whole process could take anywhere between 9 months to 18
months. The dedicated team then works on the idea as a start-up
within Adobe. When results are visible, the senior management
reviews the idea as a business plan. This review by the senior
management is called the concept accept. The whole atmosphere
is informal for the idea to evolve. However, once it takes the form
of a business idea, it is strictly process driven and very formal in
nature.
Can you tell our readers more about the Indian names we
see during startup of Adobe products?
These names are mostly engineers and some managers. If you look
at Acrobat, half of the names in the credit are Indians, not just
by nationality, but based out of the India office. There are over a
hundred Indian names. Even in Photoshop, you will find several
Indian names. One such name is Seetharaman Narayanan, who is
one of Adobe’s early engineers based out of USA.
Would love to here from you...