Aircel launches in Mumbai, says no to pricing war
Mumbai saw its seventh telecom operator, Aircel, launch GSM services today in a cut-throat market. But will Aircel be able to last the fight and how does it plan to beat competition? CNBC-TV18’s Kenan Machado reports.
No new kid on the block — that’s the message Malaysia’s Maxis Communications and Apollo group-owned Aircel is sending out to competition. Being the seventh telecom entrant in the Mumbai circle is not going to be easy for the decade-old telecom operator. But Aircel says it’s done its math and will stay away from undercutting competition in a market where local calls are charged not more than 50 paisa a minute.
Says Gurdeep Singh, COO, Aircel, “The opportunity for a seventh player to come from behind is to not be a one-sided heavily loaded but to provide a composite bouquet so one is deep understanding of consumer, segmenting them very well and putting a 360 degree around the product and the proposition offered to them.”
But that alone may not be enough. Mumbai is India’s toughest mobile market and even Bharti’s Airtel took a while to find its feet. But Singh says Aircel is betting on its subscribers spending more on heavy data usage — this it believes will push average revenue per user higher and save it from the bloodbath in the pricing fight.
Singh says, “It’s hygiene to have a competitive pricing, but it’s more important to touch base on the areas that no one has spoken or taken a thrust on which is the VAS and data play. So hence our strategy is to drive communication through VAS and adoption of it. We truly believe we can massify those through the introduction of say pocket internet while on the floor in the shop, we will continue to be price competitive.”