Tata Tele sees big future in small, medium businesses

Tata Teleservices, the enterprise telecom subsidiary of the Tata Group, has its eyes set on small and medium enterprises to propel its growth. Growing at 15-per cent year-on-year and beating the market average, the company is focussing on the digital transformation of traditional brick and mortar companies across industrial verticals and is looking at providing managed services.

Tata Teleservices sees potential in SME solutions (ICT offerings) to nearly double its growth trajectory to 25-30 per cent through this segment the coming years.

The optimism for such a high growth curve stems from the huge headroom available for growth in the SME space. Also, Tata Tele plans to reach more locations through physical partnerships, the digital medium and its transition from connectivity and conferencing solution provider to business application provider.

''While nationally, the SME enterprise business services segment has been growing at 10 per cent, our SME solutions business has been growing at 15 per cent. Besides early-mover advantages, our strong physical channel model provides us an edge over the competition. We have over 12,000 channel partners. Our comprehensive portfolio of services also helps,'' Harjit Singh Chauhan, head – SME Operations, Tata Teleservices, told Hindu BusinessLine.

According to the company's estimates, there are over two million SMEs in India. Tata Teleservices claims the dominant position with a customer base of about 50,000 SMEs. So there is a huge untapped potential. Also, a good chunk of SMEs which have already embraced some IT solutions are still under-served.

The company has set an ambitious internal target of doubling its customer base of 50,000 in the SME segment over the next 2-3 years.

While it is developing a strategy to penetrate deeper into the SME space for new accounts, Tata Tele also plans to increase its business share from existing accounts by providing business applications.

''The future initiative is development of solutions. It is not just about offering basic connectivity, but also providing them business applications that address their real needs, particularly in four or five large verticals. These could be automation or productivity increase and in some cases reengineering processes,'' he said.

The company offers SMEs a host of services that include not only telecom infrastructure but also cloud, SaaS and other enterprise mobility solutions. Its enterprise business has three segments – large enterprise, SMEs and carrier.