India’s telecom industry has seen a major change after the entry of Reliance Jio. It has made other players change their strategies and some of them have even shut down their ventures. Recently, Airtel’s chairman Sunil Mittal shared his views about the current situation of the telecom market in India and how the company is planning to stay among the best.
“I would say given the lay of the land, 2019 should be a year of stopping the dreadful decline. Will it be a year of recovery? Possibly not,” the chairman of Bharti Airtel Ltd. told in a recent interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland. “This is a year where you have to invest more, get out more into the market for 4G, compete in the new marketplace, hold on to the market share, hold on to your better customer,” he added.
Mittal believes the only reason he’s slightly unsure of recovery is that Mukesh Ambani’s Jio is dictating the market prices. “Eventually, one player is playing a low-tariff, high subsidy game. It has to be his call,” he said.
He said that Airtel has stopped fighting the tariff war and has also increased the bottom slab of tariff. “There’s got to be a minimum ARPU coming in. Even for Reliance Jio, their minimum pack is Rs 50, there’s nothing below that. So you’ll have to keep taking the lower table up.”
Mittal said that he will not focus on the rankings but instead work towards offering quality services. “I don’t think it matters whether you are number one or two. I think what matters is you need to be a viable, solid player,” Mittal said. “I’ve always given an example of Kotak Mahindra Bank. I don’t know what number it’s at. But it’s considered as a premier foremost bank. Great bank, great customer services, that should be our role model within the three players regardless of the number of customers you have.”
