Pathbreaker of the Year 2022 conferred to Tejas Networks

Over the years, Tejas has emerged as the largest supplier of optical aggregation equipment in India while competing against many of the world’s leading telecom equipment vendors from China, USA and Europe. It also became India’s largest telecom products company, with over 750,000 systems to over 500 networks deployed in 75+ countries, and is ranked as a top-10 supplier in the global optical transmission and fiber broadband equipment segments. Their products are helping 70% of the requirements of the BharatNet project, the world’s largest greenfield rural broadband rollout delivering high-speed Internet services to more than 200 million people.

While all this is happening in the trenches, there are a lot of brains and muscles busy in the backend too. The team has filed for 349 patents, of which 127 have been granted. Tejas has been helping India upgrade to 5G, supplying its products for supporting optical networks and implementing 5G backhaul, B2B services and broadband applications – it is already in the 5G era and ready to push the pedal.

Its portfolio has evolved well to cover a wide spectrum—from wireless RAN to wireline optical transport, FTTX, CE 2.0, LTE, SDN, NFV, network management and more. With an ambition to create a global network product company, this venture has carved a distinct space in a heavy-service dominated IT industry in India.

The company has been on a winning streak for the last few years—grabbing Mobile Breakthrough awards on global stages, and marquee global clients alike. It has, particularly, been recognized for its indigenous innovations and contributions to India’s Electronic System Design and Manufacturing sector. A case in point is the TJ1400 UCB – a product fully conceived, designed and made in India with Indian IPR. TJ1400 UCB is described by the company as the world’s first ultra-converged broadband networking equipment to combine wireless RAN (4G/5G), xPON-based fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), multi-gigabit IP/Ethernet access and packet-optical transmission technologies in a single, compact shelf. It’s part of the indigenous Made-in-India 4G stack.

Notably enough, the company bagged a deal from BSNL for upgrade of pan-India IP-MPLS-based Access and Aggregation Network (MAAN). This is a solid affirmation of the country’s pursuit of reduction of dependencies on imported telecom gear. Before this, in 2022, it won another significant order – this one from the Power Grid Corporation of India, for the supply, installation, commissioning and support of its state-of-the-art optical networking equipment for the organisation’s pan-India telecom backbone and access networks.

Tejas has also been strengthening its R&D capabilities and collaborations for design, development and manufacturing of its solutions for India. It created a good pillar with a strong stake in Saankhya Labs. This is expected to not only deepen its foothold in the IP space (with more patents but can also give it an edge in design of software, hardware as well as access to in-house, fabless semiconductor chip-design expertise for specialized applications). Getting into semiconductor space is both a good move to defend against the fragility seen during the pandemic across global chip shortages – and also a big head-start to dominate the $1 trillion industry that’s shaping up for the next 7-8 years. The company has been taking various initiatives to be a step ahead of semiconductor supply chain issues with attempts like these as well as advance-ordering of components.

Dataquest recognizes this true pioneer and its impact in giving the Make-in-India confidence a new fillip in the telco space.