JumpCloud co-founder Greg Keller is a busy man, hobnobbing with startups in south Bengaluru – precisely HSR Layout – as the area has gradually evolved into a burgeoning startup hub over the years.

The security company, operating in the areas of identity, access, and device management, began active sales in India in 2021 and so far has thousands of Indian customers on its platform. 

With a focus on small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), JumpCloud now wants to aggressively expand its businesses in India. Keller, who is also the company’s chief technology officer, is in talks with clients, as well as potential customers, in the IT city of Bengaluru.

Given that India has a large SME market and is the third-largest startup hub in the world,  it makes sense for JumpCloud to bring its product to India.

Keller told AIM that India is one of the fastest-growing and most crucial markets for the company. “We have customers in 160 countries and over 50% of our revenue comes from outside the US, India being a primary driver of that.”

While the company predominantly sells its platform to cloud-born companies or startups which are bootstrapped or in their initial stages of funding, it’s also taking its platform to unicorns. So far, 15 of the 100-plus unicorns in India leverage JumpCloud’s platform, notably CarDekho.

Moreover, JumpCloud, which has over 800 employees across the globe, is also expanding its workforce in India. While they are a remote-first company, Keller said besides meeting potential customers, he is also here to further strengthen the team here in India. 

Ending Microsoft’s monopolistic hold 

Keller founded JumpCloud along with Rajat Bhargava in 2013 with the objective of bringing into the world an alternative to Microsoft’s widely recognized product, Active Directory. 

“Anybody building software had to sort of bow to that portal for access control. So, we decided to develop a neutral directory service, what we now refer to as the Open Directory platform which quite literally doesn’t care what resource your company uses,” Keller said.

Over time, JumpCloud has developed a distinctive platform that consolidates various market categories, encompassing services like active directory, which falls under the directory services category. 

“This forms the foundational aspect of our platform. Notably, we cover a broad spectrum of functionalities, including single sign-on, identity lifecycle management, workflow automation, and mobile device management (MDM) for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux,” Keller said. 

“The objective was to achieve uniformity and synchronisation, creating a harmonious synergy across these integrated services.”

How SMEs benefit from JumpCloud?

Furthermore, citing a recent JumpCloud report titled, ‘State of IT 2024: The Rise of AI, Economic Uncertainty, and Evolving Security Threats,’ Keller said that typically, SMEs rely on an average of 10 distinct tools for managing identity, devices, and multifactor authentication. 

This multitude of tools entails navigating through 10 separate contract negotiations, establishing 10 distinct integrations between them, and conducting continuous 24/7 security reviews to ensure the vulnerability-free operation of each tool.

Recognizing the impracticality of this scenario, JumpCloud has found significant success in its global sales efforts by offering a solution that consolidates these diverse budgets into the JumpCloud platform. 

“We have roughly 200,000 organisations that have signed up with JumpCloud and use the service at some level. They are spread across 160 countries and yet they came to us we never had to outbound sell,” Keller claimed. 

Teaming up with Google 

While the company sells its product directly as well through resellers, distributors, managed service providers (MSP) as well as managed security service providers (MSSP), the company also has a strategic relationship with Google. 

Interestingly, a startup in its initial phase often opts for Google Workspace and not Microsoft Teams and this helps JumpCloud take its platform to them.

“In India, the success that we’re seeing is really pronounced, given the amount of cloud-born digitally native companies popping up in the country. Our channel partners in India collaborating with Google play a crucial role in occupying this space. This strategic move has proven highly effective for us, especially in the Indian market.”