Pradeepto DeyDirector - Partners & Alliances, Autodesk India & SAARC
“The most important shift happening within Autodesk’s channel ecosystem today is the transition from product-centric selling to outcome-driven engagement. As Autodesk evolves from a software company to a platform company, the role of the partner is also evolving. Partners are increasingly helping customers manage their entire Design and Make journey across planning, design, construction, manufacturing, operations, and lifecycle management.” |
PARTNERING FOR INDIA’S GROWTH
Autodesk’s India channel strategy is tightly aligned with the country’s accelerating growth in infrastructure, manufacturing, and digital construction. We are enabling a connected, data-driven “Design to Make” platform ecosystem that drives efficiency, collaboration, and sustainable outcomes at scale.
Partners are central to this vision, with them transitioning from product-centric selling to outcome-driven engagement. As Autodesk evolves from a software company to a platform company, the role of the partner is also evolving. Success is no longer defined by license transactions alone. Instead, partners are increasingly helping customers manage their entire Design and Make journey across planning, design, construction, manufacturing, operations, and lifecycle management.
Partners today are being assessed both on their willingness and ability to transform. Autodesk is making targeted investments in those partners best positioned to build specialized capabilities, deliver customer outcomes, and drive long-term growth.
In summary, our India channel strategy is completely aligned to India’s growth journey.
LEVERAGING THE CHANNEL TO DEEPEN SME REACH
Autodesk is expanding SME penetration in India by mobilizing its channel ecosystem toward outcome-driven, domain-led engagement rather than product-centric selling. Partners are being equipped to deliver measurable business impact through industry workflows, automation, and cloud collaboration—enabling SMEs to improve productivity, control costs, and accelerate delivery while ensuring scalable, service-led profitability for partners.
To deepen penetration in this segment we have built an optimum ecosystem based on coverage, capacity and capability modelling. Coverage is about geographic expansion driven primarily by our VADs. This is further strengthened by the VAD-led Center of Excellence targeted to drive business under our hub -and-spoke model.
Geo-X partners are organized in regional clusters, spanning identified hub cities that cater to several spoke towns and expand structured coverage across Tier-2, Tier-3 and Tier-4 cities—driving deeper reach, consistent enablement, and sustainable ecosystem growth.
Capacity is about partner resource presence in identified cities & their productivity. Capability is our technology penetration in the partner community that can help SME customers achieve desired outcomes.
ADAPTING TO A PLATFORM-FIRST FUTURE
With Autodesk advancing its subscription and platform-centric strategy, the channel ecosystem is evolving from traditional reselling toward delivering measurable customer outcomes aligned to the “Design to Make” platform vision.
This transformation is driven by targeted investments in partner capability, scalable capacity creation, platform-focused go-to-market enablement. We also support partners with MDP funds aligning to the business priorities. In addition, we have a dedicated Partner Readiness team that focusses in delivering readiness programs executed through Partner Readiness teams and VAD collaboration.
Our traditional partners are being re-energized through structured enablement and ISV-led P2P engagement, unlocking repeatable, services-driven growth and ensuring long-term relevance in a subscription-first environment. As Autodesk continues to evolve in its Platform journey we are deeply committed to support our partners in this transformation journey.
FUTURE OUTLOOK
Over the next three to five years, Autodesk’s India channel ecosystem will evolve into a more specialized, services-led, and platform-driven network—designed to support a potential 3x scale in business growth. We will have a stronger network of highly capable partners that can create measurable business value for customers and sustainable growth for themselves. For partners, this creates opportunities to expand beyond software sales into consulting, implementation, managed services, customer success, workflow optimization, and lifecycle support.
Our Future ready channel evolution revolves on 3 strategic growth pillars:
- Transform – Modernizing legacy partners into outcome-driven, industry-specialized solution providers aligned to the “Design to Make” platform and cloud-first delivery.
- Expand – Increasing market reach across Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, unlocking new customer segments and accelerating digital adoption beyond traditional metros.
- Diversify – Introducing new partner archetypes—including ISVs, GSI/SIs, service specialists, and consulting-led firms—to strengthen ecosystem capability and drive differentiated value creation.
