Sunil Joshi, Chief Executive Officer, India, Orange Business
India’s enterprise technology landscape is undergoing a decisive shift as organisations move beyond standalone connectivity toward integrated digital ecosystems that bring together secure cloud, artificial intelligence (AI)-ready infrastructure, cybersecurity and managed services under a unified framework. For global network and digital integrators, this shift represents both a significant opportunity and a test of whether international expertise can be paired with strong local execution. Data sovereignty mandates, the rapid expansion of global capability centres (GCCs) and the growing urgency around AI adoption are reshaping enterprises’ expectations from their technology partners. In an interview with tele.net, Sunil Joshi, Chief Executive Officer, India, Orange Business, discussed how the company is evolving from a traditional telecom operator into a digital services integrator, the strongest demand areas across connectivity, cloud and cybersecurity, and the key factors expected to drive enterprise technology spending in India over the next two to three years. Edited excerpts…
What are your priorities for the India business and where do you see the biggest opportunities?
India is a strategic growth market for Orange Business. Our focus is to help solve our customers’ business problems while we strengthen our position as a trusted network and digital integrator. Our Indian and global enterprise and public sector customers are modernising their infrastructure, operations and customer experience, which aligns well with our capabilities in India.
In India, we see opportunities to support our customers in digital infrastructure modernisation, cloud security, managed services, AI-ready networks, cybersecurity, customer experience transformation, while establishing and expanding GCCs in India. Enterprises are no longer looking at connectivity as a standalone service. They want resilient, secure, intelligent and scalable platforms that can support their business growth, automation and AI-led operations.Our focus will be on deepening engagement with existing customers, expanding our customer base and leveraging our domestic and global capabilities with a strong local execution model.
Orange Business has been transitioning from a traditional telecom operator to a digital services integrator. How is that transformation unfolding in the Indian market?
Our transformation commenced a few years ago and we are ahead of the curve in providing digital and integration services to our customers. While connectivity remains the foundation of our business, customers today expect much more than network access – they want a partner who can help them design, build, secure and manage their digital ecosystem.
Orange Business is a global network and digital integrator specialising in data and AI, helping enterprises move projects from ideation to industrialisation. In India, this means combining our strengths in connectivity, cloud, cybersecurity, collaboration, internet of things, managed services and AI-enabled solutions to deliver business outcomes.
For Indian enterprises, especially large conglomerates, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, GCCs and digital-native businesses, transformation is about agility, security, resilience and scale. Our role is to simplify this complexity by integrating multiple technologies and managing them end to end for our customers.
How are enterprise requirements for connectivity, cloud and managed services evolving in India? What is Orange Business seeing as the strongest demand areas today?
Enterprise requirements in India have evolved and are continuing to evolve rapidly. Connectivity is no longer just about bandwidth – it is about performance, security, application experience and resilience. As enterprises adopt hybrid work environments, cloud-first models, AI workloads and distributed operations – they require digital infrastructure (connectivity, cloud and cyber) that is intelligent, secure and highly available.
On the cloud side, demand is moving towards hybrid and multi-cloud environments, with a stronger focus on governance, cost optimisation (FinOps), compliance and secure access. Orange Business’ cloud approach supports private, public and hybrid cloud requirements while helping customers secure digital assets and accelerate value creation. The strongest demand areas that we see today are:
- Secure and intelligent connectivity, including software-defined wide area network and secure access service edge
- Managed cloud and data centre infrastructure services
- Cybersecurity and digital trust
- Unified communications and customer experience platforms
- AI-ready infrastructure and managed operations
Enterprises increasingly want outcome-led managed services, where the partner takes accountability not just with technological deployment, but also with reliability, security and continuous optimisation.
We also help our customers design, build and operate traditional physical data centres as well as sovereign cloud data centres to support their India-specific requirements.
How is Orange Business helping enterprises in India navigate the shift to AI-led solutions? What role do connectivity and secure infrastructure play in enabling that?
AI-led solutions require a strong digital foundation. Enterprises cannot scale AI effectively without secure connectivity, trusted data architecture, resilient cloud platforms and strong cybersecurity controls.
Orange Business is helping enterprises build this foundation. Our AI-ready offerings span consulting, network, secure cloud infrastructure and managed services. We help customers assess their current environment, modernise infrastructure, secure their data flows and create operating models that can support automation and AI at scale.
Connectivity plays a critical role because AI depends on real-time access to data, applications and users across distributed environments. Secure infrastructure is equally important because AI increases the volume and sensitivity of data being processed. Without security, governance and resilience, AI cannot be trusted or scaled responsibly.
For India, this is especially relevant across sectors such as BFSI, manufacturing, GCCs, IT/ITeS, retail and logistics, where enterprises are looking to improve operational efficiency, customer experience and decision-making through AI.
Orange Business embarked on the AI journey around four years ago, and since then, it has developed over 40 use cases that have delivered an average efficiency improvement of 20 per cent. We also developed a solution called Live Intelligence, a prefabricated suite of infrastructure with large language models and inferencing models that offer our customers a head start in their AI journey. We are happy to share our experience and learnings with our customers to support their specific AI requirements.
Can you share an example of how Orange Business India has helped enterprises in the country build secure and scalable digital infrastructure?
Orange Business India has long supported large-scale digital infrastructure modernisation initiatives such as state data centres, wide area networks and secure digital platforms across multiple states, alongside enterprise cloud and infrastructure transformation engagements. One customer example is Anant Raj Cloud, an entity of Anant Raj Limited, which is expanding its cloud and data centre business in India to address the growing demand for secure, homegrown cloud services by an increasing number of businesses.
As part of this initiative, Anant Raj Cloud is investing significantly to establish a large-scale data centre footprint across India. In its partnership with Orange Business, we designed, built, and supported the operational enablement of its cloud and data centre infrastructure, helping to create a secure, scalable, and future-ready platform environment with a strong focus on multitenancy, data security, operational efficiency and high availability. Besides supporting enterprise-grade cloud services, it was designed to efficiently serve multiple customers while ensuring secure resource isolation and resilience for each customer.
Data sovereignty and digital trust are becoming central to enterprise decision-making in India. How is Orange Business addressing these concerns in its solutions approach?
Data sovereignty and digital trust are now board-level priorities. Enterprises need and want to know where their data resides, how it is protected, who has access to it and whether their digital infrastructure is compliant, resilient and secure.
Orange Business addresses this through an approach that is built around secure infrastructure, trusted cloud, cybersecurity, privacy, compliance and resilient connectivity. Our digital trust capabilities help organisations meet sovereignty challenges while supporting global and local regulatory expectations such as the Digital Personal Data Protection Act and the Reserve Bank of India’s Data Localisation Guidelines.
We also design secure infrastructure that is a first line of defence, combining access control, prevention, detection and incident response while maintaining performance and user experience.
In India, this approach is highly relevant for sectors such as BFSI, healthcare, manufacturing, government-linked ecosystems and GCCs. Our objective is to help enterprises innovate with confidence, knowing that security, compliance and trust are built into the architecture from the beginning.
What is your outlook for enterprise technology spending in India over the next two to three years? Which sectors do you expect to drive the most growth for Orange Business?
The outlook for enterprise technology spending in India remains positive. Over the next two to three years, I expect investments to be led by digital infrastructure modernisation, cybersecurity, cloud transformation, data centres, AI adoption, automation, data platforms, OT transformation and customer experience modernisation.
Key sectors expected to drive strong growth for Orange Business include BFSI, manufacturing, smart infrastructure, IT/ITeS, GCCs, retail, logistics, healthcare, the government, as well as large Indian and global MNCs.
India is moving from digital adoption to digital at scale. Enterprises and governments are seeking secure technological deployments that are intelligent, cost-efficient and aligned with their business requirements. That is where Orange Business sees strong value differentiation — combining our global expertise, local market understanding and an integrated portfolio across connectivity, cloud, cybersecurity, data and AI, and managed services.
