Bharti Airtel (Airtel) on Monday said that it has agreed to acquire around 25 per cent equity stake in Bengaluru-based technology startup, Lavelle Networks, which specialises in software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solutions and serves a range of industry segments.
The agreement is subject to applicable statutory approvals, Airtel said in a statement.
The homegrown Lavelle Networks platform has connected several thousands of Indian enterprises from the nation’s largest financial institutions to e-commerce networks, it said.
“We are pleased to support Lavelle’s growth journey and collaborate with them to take their world-class solutions to enterprise customers in the fast growing Indian network as a service (NaaS) market. With our end-to-end solutions play and brand trust, we are uniquely positioned to serve the needs of India’s fast growing digital economy,” said Ajay Chitkara, Director and Chief Executive Officer, Airtel Business.
As more enterprises move to cloud-based applications to serve their customers in a digital-first ecosystem, they require on-demand and reliable network connectivity. As a result, there is a surge in demand for software defined solutions that have the agility to serve a cloud-based hybrid IT environment, the company said.
Airtel Business’ NaaS is a digital platform which is built to address the emerging connectivity requirements of enterprises as they go through the cloud and digital adoption and acceleration journey. As part of its NaaS portfolio, Airtel will offer software defined connectivity solutions from Lavelle Networks and co-create a host of innovations as part of its NaaS platform. This also aims to bring ‘Made in India’ products and solutions for enterprises by offering cutting edge technology and cost efficiencies, the company added.
“Digital India’s businesses are racing away to applications, cloud and software. Connecting all of this together are our enterprise data networks…our product and early market success will now be massively accelerated by this transformational partnership with Airtel,” Shyamal Kumar, co-founder and CEO, Lavelle Networks said.
According to Frost & Sullivan (F&S) South Asia, SD-WAN is the necessary arsenal for enterprises to transform and future-proof their network infrastructure in the digital age. Its market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 55 per cent in 2022-2026.
According to the F&S End-User Survey 2021, about 62 per cent of enterprises plan to deploy SD-WAN across their organisations in the next two years.