Accelerating the resurgence of the small Indian businesses!!

In May this year, Jamie Dimon,?CEO, JPMorgan Chase’s comment on WFH became an internet meme when he said that working from home doesn’t suit employees who crave the ‘hustle’. He was not the only one wanting to get back to office. In India too, businessmen are getting upset about work from home and remote working - but it’s not because of virtual meeting fatigue. It’s because internet disruptions and slow connectivity issues are a major challenge for the SMB & MSMEs relying on virtual work mode.

Almost every month we hear or experience atleast one global outage and several smaller ones. The last major one happened on 22 July 2021, when consumer websites such as Amazon, Expedia, Zomato, Delta Airlines etc. faced connectivity issues due to an internet outage. It was resolved within a few hours but the companies were affected financially as it made the global websites unusable for almost the entire day.

If an outage can have financial implications for bigger enterprises, one can only imagine the impact of downtime on smaller businesses especially in today's Covid times when almost every business has gone Digital. In fact, in India even an hour of internet disruption translates into several missed opportunities for the small business or start-up that’s adding numbers daily just to keep the lights on. It’s no secret that productivity and business confidence also goes down for these businesses every time they face connectivity issues.

The list of economic disadvantages for micro, small, medium businesses is endless, especially when you consider the impact of the lockdowns and restrictions caused by the pandemic since the last 2 years. A simple google search with ‘broadband issues small businesses’ gives me ‘about 5,30,00,000’ finds. There are these many listicles and articles on hacks for ‘how to stay operational due to internet disruptions’. The fact that these businesses are run by individuals who have little or no knowledge about the online ecosystem, only makes it worse.

I have some good news though. We, at Airtel (yup, the same old, friendly, mobile network provider), partnered with Cisco, Google Cloud & Kaspersky to launch a product specially created to solve this issue for SMB & MSME businesses. Airtel Office Internet (AOI), released on 5 August, offers superfast and secure connectivity, and is designed to support not just the small businesses, start-ups, remote and mobile workforce, but even the employees working from home.

It comes with built-in enterprise grade security from Cisco and Kaspersky to block malicious and unwanted domains, viruses, crypto-lockers and attacks. The complimentary Google Workspace licenses allows businesses to use Gmail for all professional email communication along with an entire range of productivity and collaboration tools from Google. AOI also offers a free Airtel BlueJeans license for unlimited and secure conferencing with HD quality.

AOI is best suited for SMB & MSMEs as it can be set up with little to no IT expertise, saving costly IT resources while allowing employees to benefit from the packaged tools using their preferred devices from wherever they are. It is the ultimate 'Office wala broadband' for business as it offers connectivity to all the offices and premises of an organization, from a single point of contact with one plan, one bill and GST benefits.

AOI has helped many businesses improve efficiencies with its bundled offering of high-speed office internet, unlimited video conferencing, built-in security and simplified billing.

• Learn about how partnering with AOI turned out to be a game-changer for Mohali’s BOANG Technology Pvt Ltd (formerly known as OPPO Mobiles (NR) Pvt Ltd). https://bit.ly/3jU0FC0
• Listen to our AOI customer, Nrich Learning talks about how by choosing Airtel Office Internet they reduced their costs and enhanced their productivity. https://bit.ly/3AESrVb

COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst to accelerate the digital transformation journey of businesses of all sizes across the country and with a reliable partner like Airtel, India’s SMB & MSMEs now have a better chance to adopt and adapt our customised solutions sustainably.

Airtel Office Internet is an all-in-one broadband solution that can power your business with everything it needs. Know more about AOI here- https://lnkd.in/gPSyK54N