Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel’s agreement to acquire a 25% equity stake in Bengaluru-based software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) startup, Lavelle Networks, points towards a growing market for SD-WAN (through enterprise customer offerings) in India, observes GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

The strategic development will bolster Airtel’s network-as-a-service (NaaS) portfolio at a time when enterprises are increasingly seeking to deploy software defined networks to support their digital transformation strategies.

Saurabh Daga, Technology Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “There is an increase in the number of enterprises migrating to cloud-based applications as part of their digital journeys and requiring a reliable network infrastructure to support the same.  As a result, the move will help the company gain access to the latter’s SD-WAN solutions that can transform enterprise network into the one capable of serving a demanding cloud IT environment and supporting their digital transformation efforts.”

Earlier in August 2021, Airtel had partnered with Cisco to jointly launch next generation VPN solutions based on latter’s SD-WAN technology. By boosting its NaaS portfolio with Lavelle Networks SD-WAN solutions, Airtel will now be in a position to tap India’s nascent yet rapidly growing SD-WAN space.

According to GlobalData’s India ICT Market Opportunity Forecasts* published in December 2021, the enterprise spending opportunity for SD-WAN in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 25.6% between 2020-2025. Also, as per the GlobalData’s IT decision maker survey** carried out in mid-2021, around 73.5% of the respondents in India confirmed their plans to invest on SD-WAN over next two years. Consequently, this will provide considerable opportunity for Airtel to strengthen its position in this market.

Daga concludes: “Airtel’s interest in SD-WAN should also fit into its larger cloud and 5G strategy. The company has recently received $1bn investment from Google, which is partly directed at jointly developing India-specific 5G use cases and accelerating the usage of cloud. Thus, the company is likely to further invest in augmenting its portfolio with offerings that act as key enablers of cloud and 5G adoption for businesses.”

• *GlobalData Market Opportunity Forecasts to 2025: ICT in India
• **GlobalData’s IT Decision Makers Survey was carried out in June 2021 with 4,249 executives participating as respondents across 45 countries and 24 industry verticals