Kingsoft Office aims to grow India userbase to 40 mn by year-end

Kingsoft Office aims to grow India userbase to 40 mn by year-end

Kingsoft Office, an office software and solutions provider, on Wednesday said it aims to expand userbase in India to 40 million by end of this year as it strengthens research and development capacity in the country.

China's Kingsoft Office offers WPS Office range of solutions and, already has over 23 million monthly active users in India.

"India is our biggest market outside of China. Of our 80 million users in international markets, 23 million are in India. We are aiming to take this to 40 million by year-end," Kingsoft Office Software Marketing Director (Overseas Business) Danny Chen told PTI.

He added that a large part of the userbase was acquired via pre-installations on mobile phones from companies like Xiaomi, Oppo and vivo.

"We are actively looking at increasing downloads by PC users as well. We are targeting users from universities, young professionals, freelancers, start-ups and small businesses," he said.

Globally, Kingsoft Office has about 310 million monthly active users including individuals, enterprises, and government agencies. Its solutions -free and premium- were previously built for popular operating systems like Windows, Android and iOS, but its latest version - WPS Office 2020 - will also work on macOS.

Kingsoft Office's solutions compete with those from Microsoft (Office 365) and other free solutions in the market.

"In this new age, we need tools that are powerful, yet easy, light, customisable and seamless. That tool is WPS Office 2020, which represents a new beginning and opportunity to break free from traditional methods," WPS Product Liaison for India Om Buffalo said.

He explained that there is a huge demand for productivity tools in the market but high usage of pirated software as well.

"Our aim is to end this era of piracy with a highly efficient and affordable suite that caters to multiple user segments. We will continue to invest in the market to achieve this goal," he said.

Kingsoft Office, which has Xiaomi co-founder and CEO Lei Jun as chairman, has filed for an IPO of its office software unit on Shanghai stock exchange to raise 2.05 billion yuan (about USD 300 million).

"Given that India is our largest overseas market, we expect a big percentage to come here. We set up our office in Bengaluru last year, and we are looking at expanding that hiring local talent," Buffalo said.