"Constituting a 4,000 cr market, I believe voice market holds great significance for us in India"

Airtel recently launched which is claimed to be India’s first integrated omni-channel cloud platform for CCaaS. With this, Airtel hopes to provide a straightforward Software as a Service (SaaS) model and establish a uniform platform for contact centers. Our objective is to offer contact centers—businesses or BPOs—a voice cloud infrastructure that enables them to use any software or carrier to suit their unique requirements. Our strategy integrates software, cloud, voice, and managed services into a simple and cost-effective business model.

Abhishek Biswal, Business Head, Digital Services, Airtel Digital said, "I believe the voice market holds great significance for us in India, constituting a 4,000 crore market. The overall contact center business is considerably larger. While voice is just one aspect, it plays a critical role for Airtel. One challenge faced by this market is the difficulty in conducting omnichannel conversations. The prevalent multi-vendor approach, sourcing software from one, hardware from another, licenses from yet another, and system integration and managed services from yet another, makes it complex. This multi-vendor model lacks the nimbleness of the cloud business, which promotes a 'work from anywhere' approach.

As an organization, our commitment is to consistently assist our customers with our products and services. This new initiative is designed to simplify the contact center landscape, impacting the lives of over a million contact center agents in India."

Abhishek spoke to VnD, sharing insights about the integrated omni-channel cloud platform, its pricing, security concerns and more. Here are a few excerpts from the interaction:

Talking about the pricing aspect. Could you provide insights into what the prices are going to be like?

Abhishek Biswal: Regarding pricing, we are structuring it differently from the current model. Traditionally, contact centers purchase telephone lines or a specific number of channels per seat. They also acquire licenses from software providers on a per-seat basis and set up their own physical infrastructure. This involves both capital and operational expenditures, as well as usage-based billing.

In contrast, we plan to simplify this by offering a monthly per-seat pricing structure. This approach eliminates concerns about varying capital and operational expenses, as well as license costs. Our goal is to streamline the pricing model, providing contact centers with a comprehensive monthly rate per seat that covers all associated costs. While I cannot provide specific pricing details today, I hope this gives you a better understanding of our approach."

As innovations bring enhanced features, security becomes a major concern. Do you share the same concern for your product, where security and privacy are crucial?

Abhishek Biswal: Absolutely, security is our top priority. It's not just one concern; we are committed to ensuring that our network security, recognized as one of the best in the country, is extended to all our customers. We leverage the extensive infrastructure we've established, playing on economies of scale to benefit our customers.

Among all the key features grasped, a notable one is the seamless handling of both inbound and outbound calls. Could you shed light on a couple more major features of the upcoming product?

Abhishek Biswal: I believe, the most significant feature is the simplification of the proposition. Today, many contacts struggle with multiple vendors and varying pricing logics, which our product addresses as the top feature. The second notable feature, is our ability to establish a cloud SBC, or a cloud voice infrastructure. This enables scaling from 10 seats to 100,000 seats, allowing flexibility in the agent's location. They don't have to be confined to a specific building; our service can reach agents anywhere in the country.