India is our third largest market in Asia, says Autodesk country head

Company is targeting the creator economy in smaller cities, while integrating AI into its products, says Kamolika Gupta Peres

Autodesk, which makes 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, says its growth in India will come from the booming creator economy in towns and cities. Kamolika Gupta Peres, the company’s vice-president for India and SAARC, talks to Avik Das in a video interview about Autodesk’s strategy and how it is embedding artificial intelligence (AI) into its products. Edited excerpts:

 

You took up this role about a year ago. What are your priorities and go-to-market strategy?

 

India is one of the fastest-growing markets for Autodesk worldwide. Sustaining that growth, ensuring it can be further elevated, and making mindful investments in the business to realise that vision is what I have been tasked with.

 

India’s growth is anchored on a few fundamental facts. One is the great infrastructure build-out we must achieve. Another is the manufacturing leap we want to make. Then there is the boost we want to give our creator economy — which is also a significant part of the government’s Budget proposals. We see a huge opportunity for Autodesk to bring its best tools, technologies, products and platforms to help this great leap forward. 

Our go-to-market strategy is built around that. It is built on a focus on work being done with the public sector, with large private enterprises, with manufacturers both large and small, and with the animation and creator economy. We are also looking at our overall buying experience. Our creators are increasingly coming from Tier-II and -III cities. That is what we are calling the true creator economy — increasingly it is democratised and it is outside the metros.

 

What are Autodesk’s major revenue-generating verticals in India?

 

We have a significant partnership with the Adani Group to use Autodesk as the one platform for all their mega-scale projects — whether data centres, large infrastructure builds, or solar power plants. All of that is executed on the Autodesk platform. We are also working on fairly large government infrastructure projects. In manufacturing, most high-end automotive design happens on our platform called Alias. It has been around for a number of years and is now being revamped with new AI workflows. For smaller and medium-sized manufacturers, we have our next-generation platform called Fusion, which is a major area of growth.

 

How big is the India market for you? Ten years ago, it was ranked number five in Asia in terms of revenue

 

Growth is definitely not stagnant and India is one of the fastest-growing markets. It is one of the top three markets in Asia in terms of revenue. India is also the second largest employee base outside the US. We have development centres in Pune and Bengaluru, and a lot of core product development happens here. There are about 3,000 employees, with a mix of product development, platform services, consulting services, and a lot of global customer support. I expect the AI skills base locally to continue to be strong and potentially grow further. What I can say is that from an Autodesk perspective we see a strong talent market in India that we will continue to leverage and grow.

 

Can you highlight the product development work happening in Pune and Bengaluru?

 

We support a lot of AI product development from India, across AEC [architecture, engineering, construction], manufacturing, and media and entertainment. The whole platform strategy — Autodesk Forma, for example, which is our platform for AEC — the infusion of AI into it was supported by India. Similarly, Fusion, our manufacturing platform, sees significant product development supported from here in India. Outside the US, India is the primary R&D centre.

 

How are you infusing AI into your products?

 

The first part is infusing it into the products. Then it is about building a common data layer that enables more algorithms on top of it. The third level of AI is connecting our platforms to model context protocol servers, so you can connect your existing LLM [large language model] to our platforms and use it to query your design documents. It is all a platform, data, and AI conversation, vastly different from what you would have seen from Autodesk earlier.

 

Have you also tied up with the frontier model companies?

 

We have made the model context protocol server available, so any company working with an LLM of their choice can hook it up. We have democratised it — anybody can connect their preferred LLM to our platform and use generative design to query our models in the way they see fit. I would say the problems that modern enterprises face will not be solved by a single technology or a single enterprise.

 

Yes, LLMs exist, and we absolutely believe collaboration with them is essential — hence the model context protocol we have launched to enable that side of our interactions. But we also believe the detailed design data will come from our platforms. The intelligence behind what has been designed and the learnings accumulated over time. It is only by bringing the power of these two together that you can deliver the end benefit to the customer.