An Interview with Kaustubh Nande, Manager - Marketing at ANSYS

I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Kaustubh Nande, marketing manager ANSYS. In India, company has its sales headquarter in Bengaluru and offices in Pune, Noida, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai. Almost every design professional is aware of the unmatched contribution of ANSYS in the engineering simulation field. I have not seen any company in design space that has such a large product range with solutions for every industry. 

ANSYS tops the vendors list in the CAE, FEA, CFD and electronics simulations markets worldwide. Company serves a wide range of industries with both high-end multiphysics applications and easy-to-use products designed to work with CAD applications such as Inventor, Solid Edge, SolidWorks, Creo along with the support to a neutral file formats.

Coming back to Dr. Nande’s profile. He is working with ANSYS since two years as marketing manager. He has experience in field and corporate marketing, public relations, academia, and consulting. He holds a doctorate degree and has worked as academic associate at IIM Ahmedabad, as a teaching associate at Ohio University & as a full-time faculty at Towson University in USA. Here is the interview.

Could you please update about ANSYS engineering operations and developments in India?

Sure, we have a good presence in several industries in India. Automotive, Aerospace & Defense, Oil & Gas and Energy sectors are important industries for growth in India. We serve our customers through our sales offices located across the country.   

How did ANSYS manage it’s business during recession? 

There's no success script for running a company in a historic downturn, we too experienced some slowdown for a while in India. However, overall we fared well and reported revenue growth in 2011.      

What are your views on analysis software developed by CAD vendors?

Most CAD vendors provide CAD integrated basic simulation tools to their customers. These tools are often used by CAD engineers to do very basic simulations analysis.

ANSYS is an engineering simulations software company and we offer a comprehensive range of engineering simulation solutions. ANSYS has offered native, bidirectional integration with the most popular CAD systems for more than 12 years. One can use existing native CAD geometry directly, without translation to IGES or other intermediate geometry formats. ANSYS also provides integration into the CAD menu bar, making it simple to launch ANSYS simulation technologies directly from any CAD system.

We also provide High Performance Computing (HPC) technology for customers to do bigger, more detailed and more accurate simulations in short time using multiprocessor computers.  

What are your plans for raising awareness of your products and its benefits in India? 

Several activities are carried out to promote our products in the market. We conduct seminars, workshops and conferences in various cities in India. We recently concluded knowledge intensive seminars in Pune and Kolkata during April and May 2012. We had high presence from automotive, industrial equipment, mining and process industry professionals for these day-long events.  

We also offer 1 to 5 days training sessions at our sales offices across country depending on the topic. One can find details about these sessions on ANSYS India website.

http://www.ansys.com/en_in/Training

We also conduct free webinars for benefit of customers periodically. Anyone interested can register to participate in these interactive online sessions.

How is the response to the webinars conducted by ANSYS India?

Very good. We conducted a series of webinar for Indian engineering professionals on the launch of ANSYS 14.0 release in Feb & March this year. The response for these virtual events was overwhelming with more 600 plus engineers benefiting from these webinars. 

How is your company’s collaboration with academic institutions in India?

 We have academic partnerships in place with IITs, reputed Universities and engineering colleges throughout the country. To overcome the shortage of CAE manpower, we have developed a number of creative approaches to train the next generation of engineers, such as project sponsorships, student competitions and hands-on programs. 

We offer sponsorships for academic projects for engineering students by paying between Rs. 25, 000 – 50, 000 to individual or a group project. The winners are awarded certificates from ANSYS and given an opportunity to present their work at the ANSYS Annual Users Conference. The primary objective of this innovative program is to develop technology and engineering skills, improve employability in the industry as well as benefit ANSYS to enhance its collaboration with students.

We are also a key sponsor for SAE BAJA and SAE SUPRA competitions. This is in order to provide the next generation engineering students with an opportunity to gain vital practical experience by putting together an off-road and F-1 vehicle respectively and demonstrate their engineering skills in front of the top leaders and recruiters of the auto industry.

Does ANSYS have any Re-sellers for educational products?

Yes, we do have Channel Partners (Re-sellers) who sell educational products. In India they are Innovent Engineering,  ATeN Systems and Technology Pvt Ltd., and Entuple Technologies.

Please update our readers on latest ANSYS v14.0?

ANSYS 14.0 provides a great number of new and advanced features that deliver solutions to amplify engineering, simulate most complex engineered products, and drive innovation with high-performance computing (HPC).

There are lots of new features in version 14.0 to deliver additional physics depth and breadth that can be scaled to meet the changing needs of users. The advances have been developed with feedback from our most innovative customers, developing a comprehensive solution for simulation driven product development.

What are ANSYS plans to expand in tier I and II cities in India?

From a sales perspective we are reaching out into these markets already. Naturally we will continue to aggressively position ANSYS in Tier I and Tier II cities in India where many medium scale industries are present and growing.

I would like to thank Dr. Nande for his time. If you have any questions for Dr. Nande or for DailyCADCAM, please write to me on sachin@dailycadcam.com and we will be glad to answer. 

Sachin Nalawade
Editor 
www.dailycadcam.com