Encircling Opportunity: From SMEs to State Governments

Vishal Agrawal, Managing Director, Avaya India, is optimistic about nation-wide economic initiatives that spark economic activity across industries and business-sizes, and is riding the wave to make inroads into other South East Asian markets.

What did Avaya see in India in 2016?For Avaya India, 2016 was the Year of Business Transformation. This transformation was driven by multiple factors, both internal and external. Our operations in India increased focus on value-selling to ensure that we were solving our customers’ business challenges, and to increase the relevance of Avaya in our traditional Unified Communications and Contact Centre business for BPO, enterprise and global customers.

The year 2016 also saw the government bet big on its ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’ initiatives, driving a mood swing in the country that not only boosted government spending but also impacted the SME segment. Avaya was able to successfully focus on growth areas including government and the midmarket, positioning us well for 2017. What are your highlights of the year?We successfully extended our partnership with Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom service provider, with an agreement with Avaya Private Cloud Services (APCS) to transform their contact center operations, and help Airtel deliver unified, seamless and personalised experiences to its customers.

Our midmarket and government segments made great strides in the year, with the midmarket business doubling in FY16 from the previous year, increasing its share of our business from 10 per cent to 16 per

cent. The government engagement increased from 5 per cent to 15 per cent as we increasingly helped government organisations achieve their digital objectives. For instance, we recently announced the successful completion of the Dial 100 project with the state government of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, to provide emergency services for its 204 million citizens.

We also extended Avaya’s brand into new markets, with events in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh for the first time, making a positive impact. We also held – a first for Avaya India – a successful consultant event in Dubai. What are the trends you see in 2017?Our customers are investing in automation, omnichannel engagement, Cloud services, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and analytics. Our product portfolio of the Breeze development platform, Equinox, Oceana and Oceanalytics mean we are very well positioned to go to market with solutions that can meet customers’ requirements. Government spending will definitely increase in 2017, with increased spending on infrastructure and greater roll-out of emergency services. We are working closely with State governments on providing emergency response systems and digitisation of education initiatives as major target areas. The Dial 100 project in Uttar Pradesh highlights the scale of projects that we are able to support.