AI, IoT, and cybersecurity are at the heart of our innovation: Sharat Sinha, Airtel Business

In a recent interaction with Express Computer, Sharat Sinha, CEO, Airtel Business, discusses the company’s technological innovations and their transformative impact on enterprises. Sinha highlights the role of AI-driven solutions like Assured Delivery and Spam Protection in revolutionising communication reliability and security. He also explores the company’s cybersecurity initiatives with Airtel Secure Internet and Digital Internet, addressing the growing demand for robust protection against cyber threats.

How does Airtel IQ integrate with existing enterprise systems, and what benefits does it offer in terms of productivity and compliance?

Customer experience has become the ultimate brand differentiator in today’s competitive landscape. Businesses are increasingly prioritising customer engagement to gather actionable insights, drive innovation, and optimise operations. Airtel IQ emerges as a transformative suite of cloud-based communication solutions designed to streamline customer interactions across multiple channels, including Voice, SMS, and WhatsApp.

One of Airtel IQ’s latest offering is Airtel IQ Business Connect powered by Vonage – a device-agnostic, multi-channel platform that seamlessly integrates calling, SMS, and WhatsApp into a unified interface. This platform eliminates communication silos caused by isolated conversations held by sales teams or relationship managers, ensuring continuity even during personnel transitions. By centralising all customer interactions within a secure ecosystem, businesses gain greater visibility and control while enhancing customer engagement. Notably, this solution integrates effortlessly with existing enterprise systems without requiring additional hardware investments, making implementation swift and cost-effective.

Some of Airtel IQ’s prominent offerings include a range of innovative solutions tailored to suite diverse business needs. These include Hyperlocal Marketing, a powerful martech tool for marketing campaigns; Contact Centre as a Service for scalable customer support operations; Assured Delivery, an automated multi-channel communication platform ensuring message reliability; and Spam Protection, a pioneering solution to safeguard customers from unwanted communications.

In essence, Airtel IQ is not just a collection of tools but a comprehensive ecosystem designed to empower businesses with smarter communication strategies. By bridging communication gaps, fostering seamless collaboration, and enhancing compliance, Airtel IQ positions itself as an indispensable category for organisations seeking to deliver exceptional customer experiences while driving growth and operational excellence.

Can you elaborate on the specific AI and automation features in Airtel IQ that enhance customer engagement, and how do they compare to traditional communication platforms?

Airtel IQ leverages advanced AI and automation to significantly enhance customer engagement, setting it apart from traditional communication platforms through two standout solutions: Assured Delivery and Spam Protection.

– Airtel IQ Assured Delivery: Traditional communication platforms often face challenges like message delays, delivery failures, and inefficient routing, especially during high-traffic periods. Airtel IQ Assured Delivery tackles these issues using an intelligent, AI-powered automated communication routing system. It prioritises and dynamically routes messages across Voice, SMS, and WhatsApp channels based on real-time analytics. This ensures timely and guaranteed delivery of critical communications, reduces latency, and minimises failures—delivering seamless customer interactions even at peak load times.

– Airtel IQ Spam Protection: While traditional systems rely on static filters and rule-based methods to block spam, Airtel IQ Spam Protection employs AI/ML algorithms for a proactive approach. It continuously learns from communication patterns and user feedback to identify and filter out spam communications with high precision. This dynamic adaptability ensures that only relevant and trustworthy messages reach customers, enhancing engagement while safeguarding both customer trust and brand reputation.

In comparison to traditional platforms, Airtel IQ not only addresses key limitations like latency, delivery assurance, and spam filtering, but also evolves over time through AI-driven insights and automation. This combination of guaranteed message delivery and proactive spam protection ensures a more reliable, efficient, and customer-centric communication experience.

With the launch of Airtel Secure Internet and Airtel Secure Digital Internet, how is Airtel Business addressing the growing concerns around cybersecurity for Indian enterprises?

At Airtel Business, we understand that cybersecurity is a growing concern for Indian enterprises. With cyberattacks in India projected to reach one trillion per year by 2033, businesses need robust solutions to safeguard their digital assets. That’s where Airtel Secure Internet and Airtel Secure Digital Internet come in.

Airtel Secure Internet, in collaboration with Fortinet, provides comprehensive end-to-end protection by integrating Fortinet’s advanced firewall with Airtel’s high-speed Internet Leased Line (ILL). This solution offers 24/7 monitoring, real-time threat detection, and automated mitigation, all powered by Airtel’s Security Operations Centre (SOC) and Fortinet’s SOAR platform. It ensures businesses are protected from a range of cyberthreats while optimising operational efficiency, without the need for large capital investments in security infrastructure.

In addition, Airtel Secure Digital Internet, in partnership with Zscaler, uses Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) to continuously validate user, device, and network interactions. Combining Zscaler’s cloud security with Security Service Edge (SSE) technology, this solution ensures secure cloud access, SSL inspection, and centralised policy enforcement, helping businesses reduce attack surfaces and simplify security management. Together, these solutions provide an affordable, scalable approach to cybersecurity, empowering businesses to protect themselves against evolving threats while driving digital transformation with confidence.

What role does Airtel Business’s IoT platform play in supporting smart metering and energy management, and how does it align with the government’s smart meter initiative?

I think over the past 10 years the Government has already taken significant measures to improve the financial health of the DISCOMs to ensure India’s energy security. The Government of India has been providing funds to the states for implementation of smart metering under National Smart Grid Mission (NSGM) and Integrated Power Development Scheme (IPDS).

At Airtel Business, we recognise the transformative potential of smart metering in driving efficiency and sustainability in India’s power sector. Our IoT platform, IoTHub, plays a critical role by providing utilities with reliable, scalable, and secure connectivity through Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT). This ensures real-time data transmission from smart meters, enabling accurate billing, demand forecasting, and energy optimisation.

IoTHub extends its capabilities with an advanced analytics platform that enables utilities to track and monitor communication uptimes and SLAs effectively. For smart metering, the platform leverages actual field deployment data from consumer and meter indexing, integrated through AMISPs’ workforce management applications. It also ingests meter performance parameters and power events from the Head End Systems, empowering Airtel to proactively address connectivity issues and maintain system uptime.

Airtel’s integrated offerings, including connectivity, cloud, and applications, position us as a partner of choice for system integrators (SIs) deploying smart metering solutions. For IntelliSmart Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. (IntelliSmart), we have bundled core capabilities like connectivity and cloud, while also hosting the Head End System (HES) application on Airtel Cloud. This holistic approach simplifies and economises the deployment process for AMISPs.

Through such partnerships, IoTHub is helping fast-track the government’s smart metering initiative, aligning with the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) and enabling a seamless transition to prepaid smart meters, Time-of-Day (ToD) tariffs, and a pan-India smart grid.

How is Airtel Business leveraging 5G technology to drive digital transformation for Indian enterprises, and what are some of the key use cases you’ve observed?

We have been leading the 5G charter in India and building its foundation with our 5G network and enabling the development of unstoppable applications that can be deployed to improve lives across healthcare, education, entertainment etc.

We were the first to launch of 5G ready IoT platform for businesses demonstrated #5GforBusiness use cases much before the commercial launch. We are closely working with several enterprises to develop 5G specific use cases. Some of the top 5G use cases today include – smart factories, quality control, autonomous vehicles, inventory management, smart warehouses, asset monitoring etc. 

5G will lead to the innovation of key applications and when combined with artificial intelligence, the developments in the Internet of Things (IoT) space, semiconductor industry and broader software-defined space, it will revolutionise the industry.

What future innovations can we expect from Airtel Business, particularly in the areas of AI, IoT, and cybersecurity, to further support enterprise customers?

At Airtel Business, we are continuously innovating to meet the evolving needs of our enterprise customers. We are innovating across AI, IoT, and cybersecurity to build future–proof solutions that can enable our customers in their digital transformation while staying ahead of technological trends and ensuring robust security.

IoT is helping reimagine industries like logistics and fintech with established applications in vehicle tracking and point-of-sale devices. Sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, and auto are poised to experience transformative IoT-led efficiencies, paving the way for smart factories and automated operations.

AI has been enabling personalisation, demand prediction, and intelligent business processes. We have deployed AI in data centre facilities to drive operational excellence through predictive maintenance, energy efficiency, and operational automation.

On the cybersecurity front, Airtel offers cutting-edge solutions like Airtel Secure Internet and Airtel Secure Digital Internet. These tools leverage AI for real-time threat detection and Zero Trust Architecture, ensuring end-to-end data protection.