This archive report was first published on 6 August 2020.
On August 6, 2020, Amazon signed a deal with Bharti Airtel to sell Amazon Web Services (AWS) to small and medium businesses in India through Airtel Cloud.
Airtel's vast network, serving over 2,500 large companies, a million-plus emerging businesses, and more than 300 million subscribers, will help Amazon enhance its dominance in India.
According to an insider, quoted by the Economic Times, the partnership will evolve further in the coming time, with Airtel acting as a channel partner for AWS to tap startups and SMBs.
The strategic alliance aims to position Airtel to compete against Microsoft-Reliance Jio for the public cloud market, which is expected to hit $8 billion in 2023, as predicted by BCG.
The partnership builds upon a 2015 deal, allowing the two companies to develop new services and helping customers migrate to Airtel cloud.
Puneet Chandok, President of AWS in India and South Asia, stated, “AWS brings over 175 services to the table. We pretty much support any workload on the cloud. We have the largest and most vibrant community of customers.”
Airtel's move to expand its businesses beyond telecom services is expected to achieve diversification and may extend to other alliances in the Internet of Things (IoT), India's next frontier for enterprise business, as reported by TechCrunch.
