Founded in 2008, eMudhra is a leading identity and trust service provider that is recognized by Gartner and IDC in multiple reports, including Gartner’s 2018 Market Guide for User Authentication, IDC’s Semi-annual Software Tracker for Identity and Digital Trust Category, and most recently, as an honourable mention in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Access Management.
eMudhra is one of the largest Certifying Authorities in India which is headquartered in Bangalore, India. Till date, the company has issued digital signatures to over 40 million customers in India. We approached Arvind Srinivasan, SVP, Strategic Initiatives & Global Markets, eMudhra for an exclusive interview with Insights Success–
Q: Give a brief overview of your organization and the services and solutions you offer?
A: eMudhra is an organization focused on enabling an integrated digital society by building a framework around Identity and Digital Trust. In this pursuit, eMudhra started as a Certificate Authority in India to provide digital identities in the form of digital signatures, to the enterprise and retail market.
Over the years, the organization has evolved to provide solutions that not only enable the creation of such digital signature certificates, but also offer applications that support the use of digital identities to build a trust framework, thereby allowing society to embrace paperless initiatives and improve security in a digital application ecosystem.
Recently, eMudhra has expanded globally and spans over 38 countries through a partner ecosystem with 6 global offices across 5 continents. In line with this growth, eMudhra is on its path to becoming a Globally Trusted Certificate Authority to be able to extend its solutions to a wider audience.
Q: Give us a brief overview about the featured person(s) and their contribution to your prestigious company and its success.
A: I’m a graduate in finance from Rutgers University. I completed my postgraduate studies in the same field from the University of Michigan. I am the head of the global markets business at eMudhra and a SVP focusing on strategic new initiatives in addition to managing the global markets portfolio. I started the global markets business and have been instrumental in eMudhra presence across 5 continents over the past 3 years.
I have helped set up, grow and manage the global operations, channels, and manage key relationships with various regulators of different countries. I have also been instrumental in bringing a global perspective to eMudhra’s offerings and help eMudhra compete as a solution vendor in the global playground.
Q: How do you think the eSignature and affiliated solutions market has evolved and what can be expected in the forthcoming years?
A: The eSignature market has grown significantly over the past few years. With the adoption of Digital First initiatives in large enterprises, global focus on climate change powering paperless office initiatives, and the very ease and efficiency driven by digital workflows, eSignature solutions have found themselves at the centre of many organizational roadmaps.
In the coming years, we can expect the growth to continue in many developing markets. There is still plenty of room for adoption in various government and enterprise sectors and we are constantly observing regulations across various industries and geographies embracing the technology to empower transformation in an effective and forward-looking manner.
Q: What are the benefits gained by your clients/users from your products, solutions, and services?
A: Though we are a niche player within the Identity and Digital Trust space, we offer a wide variety of offerings within this niche. For those users of our eSignature platform, they benefit from cost savings, time savings, and ease of operation. Clients of our Identity and Access Management suite are generally larger organizations and benefit from greater peace of mind powered by high levels of security (thus lower risk) around their stakeholder identities and application access.
In general, we can say that our customers benefit from being able to transform themselves or their organizations to operate and compete effectively in an increasingly digital world.
Q: Considering the necessity of adapting to disruptive technological innovations and/or development of cutting-edge solutions, how does your company sustain its competency in the IT market?
A: We find ourselves on the other end of the table when it comes to disruptive technological innovations. Our offerings, especially on the enterprise side of things, are quite disruptive. We constantly study global regulations, compliance criteria, and competitor landscape to ensure that our solutions remain cutting edge and evolve to address the needs of tomorrow.
To this end, we have a dedicated R&D team (emLabs) that works on next- generation initiatives like Blockchain, IoT Security and Trust, and mobility.
Q: What obstacles and/or limitations do you and your company face while growing, sustaining or retaining its clientele?
A: One of the biggest challenges in our growth path, specifically at a global level, is the disparity in technological advancement across different geographies which often results in inadequate regulation to promote Digital Adoption in such countries. However, we are part of many relevant global bodies from various United Nations Bodies to region- specific initiatives to drive awareness and spur adoption of Digital Technologies not solely for our growth, but for the betterment of society in general.
Q: What does the future hold for your company in terms of internal as well as holistic development?
A: Continuing our upward trajectory of growth, we aim to expand our reach and venture into new territories. To this regard, we have already laid the foundation through 6 global offices and a channel network spanning nearly 40 countries. Further, some of the products that we offer have also undergone relevant upgrades to support multiple languages and regional business nuances. We are planning to strongly focus on expanding our footprints in Latin America and Europe in the coming year.
With an aggressive global agenda, strong solution suite, and optimal positioning, we are one of the few Indian product companies making an impact on the global digital transformation space.
Q: Would you like to highlight any awards, accolades or testimonials your company has achieved throughout?
A: We are a leading identity and trust service provider that is recognized by Gartner and IDC in multiple reports, including Gartner’s 2018 Market Guide for User Authentication, IDC’s Semi-annual Software Tracker for Identity and Digital Trust Category, and most recently, as an honourable mention in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Access Management. We were also named among the top PKI solution providers across the world by a research report published by the Insight Partners.
Other prominent awards include:
- ‘The Software Innovation Solution of the Year,’ award at the Indian ISV Awards, 2019
- ‘20 Most Promising Tech Solution Providers for Government & Public Sector -2019,’ award by CIO Review India
- ‘The Most Innovative Brands to Watch-2019,’ award by Business Connect India
- DXC Insurtech Award as well as the People’s Choice Award at the Insurance Conference hosted by DXC Technology
- ‘The Top 10 Security Solutions Providers – 2018,’ award by Banking CIO Outlook
- ‘20 Most Promising Digital Transformation Solution Providers – 2018,’ award by CIO Review
Q: Any advice for the budding entrepreneurs in your industry?
A: Our industry is certainly in a growth phase. However, our offerings are focused on identity, security, and digital trust. As a result, quite often, it is not only the product or solution being sold, but rather, the element of the trust itself in the organization, people, and the solution.
My advice to any new entrepreneurs in the industry would be to ensure that their application reaches a substantial level of maturity and build an approach model that would enable the client to trust in the overall experience and organization and not just in the application. Needless to say, the other main piece of advice would be to stay current on the compliance criteria and industry standards and ensure that the ‘need’ of the solution is meticulously mapped to the use case and position accordingly.
