Indian engineers to lead next set of businesses: Riverbed Technology CEO

Many years ago when Paul Mountford visited India, banking penetration in the country was just around 10 per cent. A lot has changed since then. Now the chief executive officer (CEO) of San Francisco-based Riverbed Technology, Mountford says he is impressed to see a fast-growing economy with a thriving start-up ecosystem and increasing new digital services. Moreover, over 60 per cent of the population in the country now has bank accounts. In an interview with Peerzada Abrar during his first visit to the country as Riverbed CEO, he says, while Indian engineers are playing a key role in developing the company’s flagship products, he is quite bullish about the domestic market. Edited excerpts:

How do you see the Indian economy from your perch?
 

I was here actually when Cisco opened its office here. Back then, we were starting to see the emergence of billionaires like Kishore Biyani (Future Group founder). I came to meet all the billionaires, learning about how they thought about India, macroeconomics and demographics, and their business models. But it (India) is such an exciting place. Sometimes it takes little longer here to get a few things done in the public sector, but it is no different elsewhere. In the last five years, India has gone from 20 per cent of people having bank accounts to over 60 per cent. The opportunities that exist both for the population and for the businesses which operate here are tremendous. There are a lot of fantastic engineers here who are going to lead the next set of businesses in the country. 

What do you think about the Indian elections?
 

I am not an expert but I think whoever wins should try and release the complexity of getting decisions made. For example, Digital India projects, including digitisation of post offices. Because those (post offices) are mostly in villages, they can play a key role in providing more and more digital services. 

You are leading the company’s evolution from wide area network (WAN) optimisation to a software platform provider. Could you share insights about this transformation?
 

It’s a natural progression. We always had the assets. But we just hadn’t really brought them together on to a platform. We had acquired a couple of companies to fill the gaps. If you are in retail business, the application on your smartphone is the new salesman. The experience you want from it has to be better than it would be if there was a human there. 

What role do you see India playing in Riverbed’s transformation?
 

India is fundamentally building our software-defined WAN platform and also here we are doing our software-as-a-service acceleration as well. So that’s been developed here in Bengaluru, so also the SteelHead mobile software, which drives high performance on iPads or laptops.

India would need an investment of about $4.5 trillion till 2040 to develop infrastructure to improve economic growth. What are the opportunities that Riverbed is tapping?
 

We have two platforms. One is our digital experience management platform, which measures the applications, data and experience in an easy manner. If I am CEO of a retail company and I want to see what my branded application is doing, I can see it quite easily. If I am the CIO of a financial services company and I am providing loans out there, I can see if I am reducing the time it takes to complete the loan. 

What are some of the large projects, including the government ones, that you are working on in India? 
 

We are competing on what Digital India is trying to do for a number of government projects. Our job to take what we’ve learned in other places and make sure the government leadership understands the value of it. Let’s call it citizen experience, where you’ve got e-government trying to connect (citizens) with new services. But if the performance is poor and citizens don’t see value in it, they will continue to do what they have always done. We are working with the Indian government to drive that forward. 

What are your expansion plans in India?
 

We (Riverbed) grew 106 per cent year-on-year last year here, which is the highest for us globally. We are putting more engineers and more people in support and sales. We are looking for acquisitions when we have a gap and if we are not going to develop it organically. We’ve bought companies all over the world. In fact, some of the best deals (acquisitions) we have done are not in America because the prices are usually very high. We are interested in areas like artificial intelligence, machine learning analytics, and security.