India’s enterprise networking market grows as companies start bringing employees back to work

Vendor revenues in India’s enterprise networking market grew by 14.1% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2021, according to a new report by the International Data Corporation (IDC). The market research firm attributed the growth to a weak base last year owing to the first wave of the pandemic, which led organizations to shut down physical offices and focus on work from home infrastructure instead. Sequential revenues also rose by 5.6%, the IDC report said. 

Further, the overall market for routers in India grew by 18.6% year-over-year, with both enterprise and service provider segments seeing growth. Service providers include sectors like telecom, professional services, banking and more. In the second quarter of 2021, the router market in India stood at $81.1 million (by vendor revenue).

The numbers suggest that corporations in India are looking to bring employees back to work as things start returning to normalcy. On September 28, the Economic Times reported that top companies like Coca Cola, Godrej, Dabur and Tata Consumer have decided to start allowing their employees to come back to work.

“After 18 long months, our leaders @Wipro are coming back to office, starting Monday (twice a week). All fully vaccinated, all ready to go — safely and socially distanced,” Rishad Premji, chairman of IT firm Wipro tweeted on September 11. Social media giant Facebook has also said that it is preparing to start allowing employees back in office and will allow 25 percent of its staff to return from October.

Other companies looking to bring employees back into offices include Uber India, South Korean electronics giant Samsung and Amazon India, which has allowed workers in warehouses and supply chain to return. “We continue to monitor the situation closely. Right now, we are asking employees in roles which can be done effectively from home to continue to do so till January 3 next year,” says the spokesperson for the company.