Remote access and remote control computer software solution TeamViewer has been in existence since 2005. The Germany-headquartered company set base in India in 2018. The software, like many other similar applications, saw an obvious spike in usage when the COVID-19 pandemic hit us in March 2020. 

But along with its pros, work from home also came with its issues – communication barriers being one of them. To build better communication and monitoring systems, companies deployed productivity apps and remote access softwares to figure out the activity of their employees and engage better with them. TeamViewer is a popular choice among these applications.

Recently, the company appointed Rupesh Lunkad as managing director, India. He succeeded Krunal Patel, who played a pivotal role when TeamViewer was setting up its presence in India in 2018.

How does TeamViewer make money?

Essentially, it does not require registration and is free of charge for non-commercial use. There are three levels of paid commercial use the company provides:

• Business License: One licensed user can initiate device connection one session at a time, priced at ₹1,499 per month.
• Premium license: Multiple licensed user accounts that enable one user to connect at any given time, priced at ₹3,099 per month. 
• Corporate License: Multiple licensed users can initiate device connections, with up to three sessions open at the same time, priced at ₹6,599 per month.

Image: TeamViewer

Enterprise business is growing strong

While declaring the Q1 2022 results, Teamviewer CEO Oliver Steil talked about how the company has achieved double-digit growth on top of 2020’s and 2021’s strong first quarters, underlining the resilience of business despite general macroeconomic uncertainty and a more normalised working environment.

He emphasised that the Enterprise business is growing strongly with an ever-increasing contribution to the company’s success, and the Q1 2022 figures indicate that as well. It shows that there is continued momentum, with billings up 51% YoY to reach € 35.2 million. The Enterprise business accounts now for 22% of total billings, indicating a mix shift of the businesses.

Image: Inauguration of TeamViewer’s new R&D hub in Portugal

For Q1 2022, the billings are up by 12% compared to the previous year. There is strong retention of pandemic cohorts resulting in 101% Net Revenue Retention. The company informs that the SMB business is up 4% YoY, with higher quality tiers growing 15% YoY (LTM). The subscriber development is stable, with 620,000 at the end of Q1 2022.

Image: TeamViewer Quarterly Statement Q1 | 2022

Go down after pandemic subsides?

Though most popular for its remote access software, that is not the only area TeamViewer caters to. In an interview with CNBC last year, Steil said, “We are active in different parts of the business. For large customers, we are back in the normal rhythm of pipeline building and a sales cycle of three to six months. We also have smaller tickets which have a sales cycle of a day or two.”

When asked if the company is expecting a drop in demand as the crisis felt in 2020 and 2021 has subsided, Steil adds that he looks at the situation differently. 

“We have broadened our solution portfolio. We are looking at providing solutions with augmented reality and IoT that will really go into digitalising industries across the globe with very different use cases, like frontline worker enablement and remote IT management. So, there is much more to our business than working from home. WFH just led to some extra spike last year, but that’s actually only a part, and we are moving more and more to diverse use cases. Over the last few years, we have invested and put in more R&D. The solutions portfolio now consists of the entire value chain of businesses,” he adds.

More innovation and diversifying product offerings (IoT, AR)

• Assist AR – It is a remote support solution that provides secure augmented reality-powered visual assistance. It uses technologies like advanced 3D object tracking, with which the expert can “mark” the display with arrows, notes, and highlights that make it easy for the user to follow along with the expert’s instructions. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities are also used to recognise printed characters like those often found on machines, tools, and equipment. 

Image: World Class After-Sales Support with xAssist for improved quality and faster service; TeamViewer

• TeamViewer Frontline – It is a fully integrated augmented reality solution. TeamViewer says that “Frontline is designed to consciously empower the human worker in an increasingly digitised working environment.”
• TeamViewer Engage – TeamViewer calls it a next-gen digital customer engagement platform for online sales, digital customer service, and video consultations. It comes with scalable cloud or on-premises deployment options, single sign-on (SSO) integration, and built-in security.

India strategy 

TeamViewer opened its doors to India in 2018 and appointed Krunal Patel as Head of Sales in the country. At that time, the company had talked about leveraging the market’s immense growth potential for enterprise as well as SMB remote access, collaboration and IoT solutions. In an interview in 2019, Patel said that one of the main reasons the company came to India is the growth the country is experiencing. The company wanted to have more Indian clients and better support Indian customers. The firm has customers coming in all shapes and sizes from across the country.

During the recent appointment of Lunkad, Sojung Lee, president of Asia Pacific, TeamViewer, said that this hiring would help to expand its footprint in the India market further and create a strong ecosystem of alliances with its partners.

Competition

There are many products in the market similar to TeamViewer that are giving it stiff competition. Some of them are:

• AnyDesk – One of the biggest competitors of TeamViewer is AnyDesk. It lets the user view the screen, control the mouse & keyboard, and manage data & files of other devices. The company says that AnyDesk Software has been downloaded over 500 million times with a presence across the globe.

Image: AnyDesk vs TeamViewer – Why AnyDesk Is the Better Alternative

• Chrome Remote Desktop – It solves a similar purpose and is backed by Google. If one needs to access their work computer from home, view a file from a home computer while travelling, or share a screen, Chrome Remote Desktop allows all of that. TeamViewer can control any device – computers or mobiles, while Chrome Remote Desktop limits to mobiles; flexibility is less.
• GoToMyPC – It has been in existence since 1998 and has three versions – Personal, Pro and Corporate.

While multiple competitors have cropped up, TeamViewer retains its long existence amongst users. Broadening its applications might be a good idea to sustain the competition and the shift back to work in offices.