Airtel Business eyes major slice of video collaboration market

Story and images by Danish Khan / The Economic Times

NEW DELHI: Airtel Business, the enterprise services arm of Bharti Airtel BSE 2.25 %, is targeting a major slice of the Rs 400-500 crore video collaboration market through its plan to offer a telepresence room or space for high-end videoconferencing mainly to banking and financial services, IT and IT-enabled services industry, and small and medium enterprises.

\"Being the first to offer something like this will allow us to get the dominant position in this segment of the industry. We see ourselves getting the first-mover advantage,\" Manish Prakash, director of Airtel Business told ET. Airtel, India's leading mobile phone operator, has partnered with networking equipment maker Cisco to provide this service in the country. The company sees video collaboration services as a faster growing segment than its traditional products, Prakash said.\"There's a huge market for such solutions. this offering becomes relevant with the speeds we are starting to get in broadband,\" he said.

As per market estimates, the video collaboration market is growing 12-15 per cent every year. About 8,000 videoconferencing rooms are set up in India every year and a large share of this market is expected to move towards telepresence room over the next few years. At present, the company has a share of about a third of the total enterprise market and serves more than 350,000 business-to-business or B2B customers.

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