A chart presented at the event shows the market shares of different security software companies, left. Right: from top, Kaspersky Lab's Chief Operating Officer Eugene Buyakin and Vice President of Marketing Roger Wilson

Russian based Kaspersky Lab is rapidly rising in the internet security world as an innovative technological leader. Marking a 56 percent growth in 2009 with US 370 million dollars turnover, the privately owned rather small company aims at $600 million dollar revenue in 2010.
According to Kaspersky Lab's Chief Operating Officer Eugene Buyakin, Kaspersky Lab commanded fourth position in the security software segment claiming 4 percent market share in 2008. In 2009, it rose to the third position, behind Symantech and McCafee with 6 percent market share and in 2010, it aims at increasing the market share to 7 percent.
Founded in 1997 and owned by 10 individuals, Kaspersky now has presence in 28 countries. The fast growing company now protects 20 percent of the total internet population or 300 million Internet users.
Once dominated only by American developers like Symantech, Kaspersky made its place by making anti-malware programme that is stronger and more reliable. The company heavily invests in its research and development team. Although its core group is small, it is now geographically expanding its offices due to high sales in the last two years.
"We have invested aggressively in Research and Development. In one year, we have increased our R&D size by 50 percent. To succeed in this industry we have to expand this team," said Eugene Buyakin.
Currently the information security market is worth US 28 billion dollars. Of this web security claims 6 percent share, messaging security 11 percent, endpoint security 25 percent, network security 30 percent, identity and access management 14 percent, and vulnerability management 11 percent.
"The market trend for Antivirus industry is growing. But the classic antivirus technology has become invalid. It demands new technology development and we have the best team in the industry," he said.
"In the future our role will go to information security," he noted.
Kaspersky attributes its growth not just on being able to make new technologies, but also on having good terms with distributors or partners who get better financial deals, strong branding and localisation of products in different regions.
Keith Maskell adds, "to us, partnership means family- its not just business. We are organically growingnot growing through acquisition of other companies. We do not sell our products directlybut through our distributors and partners, so that they make good profits too."
Vice President of Marketing Roger Wilson adds, "our competitors give the partners less margins and not-so-great treatment. But our relationship with them is different."
"Traditionally American companies have huge home market to put their focus in. But Kaspersky Lab's home market is small. It can't make a business just depending on the home market. So it rolled out… Now its management team is also international in nature," said Wilson, who is from England.
Regarding Kaspersky's strong focus on the emerging market where it customises software package along with a price tag suitable for the economies, he said that developing countries have over taken developed countries in telecoms technology. For instance, Africa is dominantly all wireless.
With this in mind, Kaspersky went for a big drive in the Asian markets giving the campaign a local flavour. For instance, it used Jackie Chan for advertisement which appealed to not just China or Japanbut also in other Asian countries.
Wilson notes, "we just started in developing nations. There are huge potentials. Internet is going to change life there."