Foād Farrokhnia
Vice President, Global Partner
Ecosystem, Asia Pacific & Japan, Zscaler
From technical enablement and managed services to AI and data protection, Zscaler is evolving its partner ecosystem to meet India’s rapidly changing security landscape. It is building a deeper, more capable partner ecosystem in India—and helping customers navigate the shift to Zero Trust.
In a conversation with VARINDIA, Foād Farrokhnia, Vice President, Global Partner Ecosystem, Asia Pacific & Japan, Zscaler talks about Zero Trust, services-led growth, partner enablement, and the opportunities shaping India’s cybersecurity market –
What is Zscaler’s vision and strategy around building the partner ecosystem and what does it mean for India specifically?
Our vision for the partner ecosystem is very clear: we want to build a community of partners that can lead customers through one of the most important technology shifts of this decade — the move from legacy network security to a true Zero Trust architecture. For Zscaler, partners are not simply a route to market. They are an extension of how customers discover, design, deploy, and operationalize secure digital transformation.
India is a strategic growth market for Zscaler, and our partner strategy reflects that. We are focused on three priorities. First, helping partners build deep technical and advisory capability around Zero Trust. Second, enabling them to create profitable services-led practices around deployment, managed services, transformation consulting, and customer success. Third, expanding our joint reach beyond large enterprises into highgrowth segments where customers need simplified, scalable, and outcome-driven security.
The opportunity in India is not just to sell more cybersecurity. It is to help organizations reduce cyber-risk, simplify complexity, and create a secure foundation for digital and AI-led growth.
The channel conversation has clearly shifted from product reselling to outcome-led, servicesoriented partnerships. How is Zscaler enabling partners to make that shift?
The transformation is very real. On the ground in India, we are seeing partners move from transactional selling to advisory-led engagement. They are leading architecture workshops, running proof-of-value engagements, helping customers prioritize use cases, and building services around implementation, optimization, and ongoing management.
Zscaler is enabling this shift through structured enablement, technical certification, specialization, and commercial models that support partner-led growth. Programs such as the Zscaler Partner Academy help partners develop the skills they need across sales, pre-sales, deployment, and post-sales. Zscaler ACES gives our most advanced technical partner talent deeper access to our experts, product teams, and roadmap. Z-Flex also gives partners a more flexible way to help customers adopt Zscaler based on business outcomes rather than rigid procurement cycles.
The key point is this: the future of the channel is not margin on resale alone. It is services, expertise, and customer outcomes. We are investing to help Indian partners make that transition successfully.
What capabilities and specializations are you prioritizing for Indian partners and how is the Zscaler Partner Program designed to incentivize that evolution?
A trusted advisor is a partner who can sit with a customer at the start of the transformation journey, not just at the point of procurement. For Indian partners, we are prioritizing capabilities in several areas. The first is Zero Trust architecture, where we help customers move away from castle-and-moat security and towards a model where access is based on identity, context, policy, and risk. The second is data protection, because as AI adoption accelerates, the question of where sensitive data lives, who can access it, and how it is protected becomes even more important. The third is cloud and workload security, as Indian enterprises continue to modernize applications and infrastructure. The fourth is managed services, because many customers want outcomes but may not have the internal security resources to operate everything themselves.
Our Partner Program is designed to reward that evolution. We want to incentivize partners that invest in capability, certifications, specializations, customer success, and services-led growth. Partners that develop deeper expertise should be better positioned to differentiate themselves, create stickier customer relationships, and capture more lifecycle value.
What concrete milestones are you setting for the India channel over the next 12–18 months?
Our focus over the next 12 to 18 months is to scale quality, not just quantity. We want a larger partner ecosystem in India, but more importantly, we want a more capable ecosystem. There are three areas where we are setting clear expectations.
• The first is certification and technical depth. We want more partner sellers, architects, pre-sales engineers, and delivery specialists trained and certified on Zscaler.
• The second is managed services. We see strong demand in India for partner-led managed security services, especially among organizations that want enterprise-grade Zero Trust outcomes without building large in-house operational teams.
• The third is market expansion. Large enterprises will remain important, but India’s mid-market and emerging enterprise segments represent a major growth opportunity. This is where Z-Flex, partner-led services, and stronger enablement can make a meaningful difference.
How is Zscaler tailoring its channel investment and GTM strategy to meet that specific market reality?
India is at a very important moment. The DPDP Act has elevated the conversation around data protection, accountability, and governance. At the same time, AI is changing how data is created, accessed, shared, and analyzed. Our channel strategy in India is built around that reality. We are helping partners lead conversations around Zero Trust as a business enabler, not simply as a security control. That means helping customers modernize access, reduce reliance on legacy network architectures, improve visibility, protect sensitive data, and prepare for AI adoption in a secure way. We are also tailoring enablement around the use cases that matter most in India: cloud transformation, secure branch and hybrid work, data protection, compliance readiness, ransomware defence, and AI security. India does not need a one-size-fitsall channel model. It needs partners that understand local customer realities and can bring global best practices to them in a practical, scalable way.
MESSGE TO THE PARTNERS
“The opportunity in India is now and partners are central to capturing it. Customers are rethinking security architecture, data protection, cloud transformation, and AI readiness at the same time. They need partners who can help them move from complexity to simplicity, from legacy security to Zero Trust, and from point products to measurable business outcomes. Our commitment to Indian partners is that we will continue to invest in their success. That means deeper enablement through Partner Academy, stronger technical communities through Zscaler ACES, more flexible commercial models such as Z-Flex, and closer collaboration in the field around joint opportunities. My message to partners is simple - if you invest in Zero Trust capability, if you build services around customer outcomes, and if you position yourself as a trusted advisor, Zscaler will invest with you. India is one of the most exciting markets in APJ, and we believe our partners will play a defining role in shaping its secure digital future.”
