Business Organizations in the modern digital age work on complete IT infrastructure with all the departments in close integration. However, there are challenges that arise abruptly due to the absence of planning in the proper digital network.
Technology malfunctioning and uncertain connections often lead to work disruptions that could probably be very costly and damaging. There arises a need for a solid and reliable network foundation that can ensure consistent high-speed connectivity and maintain the security of the entire system.
Network Professionals like Shyamal Kumar offer all-inclusive robust network infrastructure that helps to minimize downtime, streamlining the network process in enabling swift communication between the devices on the same network and empowering the workforce toward better efficacy.
Shyamal Kumar is the CEO of Lavelle Networks, a modern IT networking solutions enterprise that strengthens business organizations through advanced networks, which fortifies the entire network by shielding the system from external threats and keeping it up to date with the latest software.
A graduate of BITS, Pilani, India, Shyamal has been in the data networking space for the last 18 years leading products at Tata Elxsi, Juniper Networks, Inkra Networks, Telsima Communications, Riverstone Networks, NetContinuum, and Versa Networks, among other companies.
In an engaging interview with the Insights Success team, Shyamal opened on the exciting saga of commencing his business, the inspirations behind the drive, the initial challenges faced, business features, and his vision of the organization.
Please tell us about Lavelle Networks in detail.
Lavelle Networks, founded in 2015, is an enterprise networking software company with over 100+ customers and several of them being in the Top 25 companies on the national stock exchange. We offer network-as-a-service, where we use our software to manage, optimize, and secure our customer networks across their branch offices, data centers, and cloud locations. Our customers can interface with us using standard help desk tools rather than spending their time on enterprise network configurations, tools, and troubleshooting. We let the customer focus on their core business applications while we keep their networks up, fast, and secure.
Please brief us about yourself and shed light on your professional tenure.
I am leading this company as a Co-founder and CEO, driving the vision and strategy for customer success, shareholder growth, and employee engagement. I am a product leader and have introduced product-led growth concepts throughout the organization creating a deep sense of empathy for customer needs in all team members. I am deeply committed and passionate about putting the company and customers ahead of everything else in the race to fast growth and value creation.
What was your inspiration behind venturing into the networking industry?
In 2015, we saw the huge growth in public cloud services in enterprises and felt that a huge, underserved need in enterprise networks connecting to the cloud will open opportunities for challengers like us to ride the tailwinds of the market inflexion point – today, we call that inflexion point – SD-WAN. We used to frequent a Café Coffee Day on Lavelle Road, in the heart of Bangalore, and it gave us the inspiration to call our company – Lavelle Networks. I drew the initial product architecture on a paper napkin and saved it for a long time as a souvenir. We built our software on the cloud, way ahead of our industry peers, and today that has made us the best multi-cloud solution for SD-WAN.
What professional values and qualities do you think your clients value in you and Lavelle Networks, the most?
The enterprise IT world today is in a state of disruption today due to digital transformation. IT leaders are needing to business demands that were unheard of a few years back. No one is happy anymore if IT just works. The business leadership wants IT to empower, enable, and accelerate business growth.
In such a world, the fact that we are technology experts and have tremendous know-how in enterprise networks is the biggest quality that endears us to our customers. They can trust our information and opinion, and they might or might not buy from Lavelle Networks – but they know that they can depend on our conversations.
That’s super critical today. Customers need to know that in the cacophony of digital marketing, targeted Ads, high-decibel messaging, and multi-cloud realities – their technology partner is someone they can depend on and trust.
Even though we are a young company – we have won the trust of our enterprise clients, and that I believe is what they value most in us.
What were the initial challenges you faced while venturing into the respective industry, and what are the challenges now, as a business leader, how do you overcome these challenges?
The greatest challenge is building the skill to focus on what matters and learn to let the rest take its course. Saying no to the things that you are not focusing on is the biggest challenge in working for our company – Lavelle Networks.
As a young startup, there are so many demands on the product from every quarter – sales want new features, engineers want to fix yesterday’s features, customers want you to build everything the competition has, investors want you to have all the right keywords from the latest technology trends in your product – and in the middle of all this you have to decide what’s right and what’s important for the product, and then focus on those decisions.
What are the USPs that highlight Lavelle Network’s uniqueness?
The software architecture allows us to scale on any kind of platform – hardware, cloud, or SaaS (Software as a Service). So, we have built the largest networks in India from our entry into the market till today. The second aspect of our company is a relentless focus on customer experience. It is tough to run a nationwide network across multiple kinds of operator links and applications. Our customers do that. So, we are always focused on helping our customer IT teams to the best of our abilities. This has created a strong word-of-mouth reference for us across the industry.
As an experienced professional, what would you like to advise the budding aspirants willing to enter the respective niche you are catering to?
Innovation needs to be driven for customer success, and your business is built on strong foundations. Place your product at the center of your lives in the organization, and relentlessly focus on operational and execution excellence. This will get you as close to your vision as you can.
What are the future goals of Lavelle Networks, and how do you envision its operations eventually?
We are looking to grow 10X in the next couple of years. We are taking our company to more than a thousand customers and a market leadership position in the network as a service space. We are an early leader now – we rate among the Top three choices for SD-WAN across our market – we are now going for the top spot. We believe that the Indian enterprise IT market is set for huge growth, and it is tremendously underserved today. The government is putting a lot of focus and energy behind – Make-In-India, Startup India, and Digital India – and these three initiatives are going to mean that technology product companies in India are going to take the world by storm. Lavelle Networks represents the bold vision of our country to take the best of digital – software, cloud, mobile, and internet – and use it to make the world a better place.
