No easy cure for Quick Heal

Quick Heal gets more than 80% of its revenue from the retail antivirus segment. Growing competition and abundant freeware have hurt its growth. Since its IPO, the company’s earnings have remained flat. Where does Quick Heal go from here?

Antivirus software company Quick Heal is as old as public internet in India

It has maintained the top spot in the consumer retail segment for over two decades

But the abundance of freeware and increased competition has disrupted Quick Heal’s business

Earnings are a reflection of this disruption and have remained flat since its IPO

What do antivirus software provider Quick Heal Technologies and public internet services in India have in common? The year 1995. It’s when public internet services first began in India, and also when Quick Heal released its first antivirus product for Windows 3.1.

Soon after its birth alongside the retail internet, Quick Heal went on to become the market leader of India’s consumer antivirus space. According to its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) filing in 2016, Quick Heal had a 30% share in the retail segment according to a report by global management & strategy consulting firm Zinnov. It achieved this on the back of a robust physical distribution model.

AUTHOR

Sidhartha Shukla

In his earlier stint at Moneycontrol, the website owned by the Network18 group, Sid wrote on cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity, business, and finance. Born in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, Sid has spent most of his life in Jalandhar, Punjab. He has a BSc in Mathematics from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Sid is a comic book nerd and a big fan of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Brian Azzarello. He can be reached at sidhartha at the rate the-ken.com

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