Tremendous Room For Growth In Broadband Adoption Among Indian SMEs

India’s Internet subscribers are projected to grow at a CAGR of around 10% between 2011 and 2015. This growth presents a phenomenal opportunity for India’s telecommunication providers to capture an untapped segment of users and bind them by increasing their “stickiness” factor.

Indian telecommunication providers have gone beyond basic internet services to offer consumers and businesses various bundles designed to cater to their needs. For consumers, bundles comprising of broadband, television and digital voice services are popular – enabling users to realise substantial savings with the convenience of a single bill.

Within India’s SMEs, bundled offerings including broadband and value added solutions such as managed services, hosted productivity suites, managed security, hosted storage etc have considerable potential, according to the results from AMI-Partners’ India SMB Cloud Playbook study. “Such offerings, especially within the SaaS solutions arena, create a binding effect on the customer, differentiating an otherwise basic service – broadband – and make it it far more difficult to switch providers since the customer’s lifeline – their data and business processes - are based on the solutions bundled in with the basic service,” says Neha Jalan, Senior Associate – AMI-Partners

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As Indian SMEs expand, opening new locations and having a greater percentage of their workforce traveling regularly, mobile broadband access has gained prominence. AMI-Partners’ India SMB Cloud Playbook study reveals that among the smaller businesses having <50 employees, the top mobile broadband bundle couples wireless cards with a hosted productivity/ collaboration suite offered at $3/$5 per seat per month. Among slightly larger businesses (50-249 employees), who have moved beyond the initial wave of IT adoption, a bundle combining wireless cards with CRM offers service providers greater potential for revenue uplift. The largest MBs, having 250+ employees, have already moved critical business processes online and place maximum value on wireless cards paired with hosted email security.

“Indian telecommunication providers with market power in basic service offerings can broaden their revenue stream, increase average revenues per user (ARPU) and reduce churn with the introduction of successful bundled offerings,” adds Neha.. “Indeed, the growth of cloud solutions has transformed telecommunication providers from being mere vendors to a distribution channel, allowing them to leverage their market penetration and broaden their playing field.”