Anil Ambani stands today a worried man. The battlefield is ripe, the trumpets have been blown, and it’s now just a question of who starts the war...
Yes, guess the answer. Who is Reliance Communications’
biggest competitor giving Anil sleepless nights? We’ll give you some hints... This is a company that now has India’s largest next generation convergent digital network, comprising over 165,000 kilometers of fibre optic cable, not only in India, but also across the European, American, Middle East continents, apart from Asia-Pacific. If that’s not enough to give the creeps to Anil, fathom this! The company now has the largest fixed wireless customer base; it’s now the largest carrier of wireless data; it has over 50% market share in the enterprise data services category. And of course, it is now the second largest telecom services provider in India with a humongous subscriber base close to 38 whopping million! And it’s not Bharti or Vodafone, or even Tata Teleservices. In fact, the biggest competitor that R-Com is facing as on date... is R-Com itself!!! Because, notwithstanding the potshots he continues taking at the companies around him, the fact is that the Anil Ambani of today is envisioning a telecom future that is completely dominated by R-Com’s products and services, a future where the only space Anil will leave for competition is... outside the industry! That is the future...
Cut to 2003, the past! January 14, the industry sees frenetic and frantic activity! The topic: Reliance Infocomm launches Reliance India Mobile in a magnanimous fashion. Competitors feign emotions ranging from openness to straightforward contempt. How much could a new entrant add to market growth? How could petroleum firm managers and energy industry upstarts even think of making head or tail of a sector like telecom? And that too when the launch was on a so-called (outdated?) Qualcomm technology called CDMA, which had never been marketed on such a mass scale by any company in India, public or private. Criticism was cutting and painstakingly harsh, with an objective to prove that the Ambani clan’s telecom dream would remain... just a dream. And then, July happened! On July 1, 2003, Reliance Infocomm presented the now historic marketing move titled ‘Monsoon Hungama’, an offer that allowed any individual to own a mobile phone (and the service) for just Rs.500! Nobody in their wildest imagination could have perceived that this mite of a tactic would pack a punch that would send almost all competitors reeling and bloodied and would also thunderingly rework the sectoral growth forecasts in one go! S. P. Shukla, President, Wireless, R-Com, commented exexclusively to B&E, “We were the first company to say that we will take mobility to the masses. I’m sure everybody recalls the mission statement of our founder Chairman (Dhirubhai Ambani) who said that he would consider the telecom business as having achieved its goal only if it could make mobile telephony available to the masses at a price even cheaper than that of a postcard.”
Think about it. Till July 2003, the total mobile subscriber base of India was just a relatively puny 12.6 million! Airtel was comfortable with 3.07 million, BSNL was ‘cruising’ at 2.26 million, Hutch was competing with its 2.1 million, and others (BPL, Idea Cellular etc) had, yes, others. That is, it took all these companies eight ringing years since the launch of mobile services (in 1995) to reach these figures. The concepts of price wars and handset bundling were strategies that had never before been used in the industry... that is, till the time the ‘Ambani clan’ arrived and showed the world what competitive strategies really meant!
Cut to the present day, December 2007, and you’ll have a hard time digesting the growth figures. The total mobile subscriber base in India has electrifyingly crossed a mind boggling 250 million!!! Although Bharti – with over 51 million subscribers – has maintained its numero uno position (but one gained only after having a first mover’s advantage of 8 long years), there’s a stupendous new claimant to the numbers game. Reliance Communications. In this cutthroat industry that boasts of deeply entrenched and extremely acerbic rivals, and even after being hit by the grim cloud of family estrangement and fallout, Anil Ambani’s R-Com has now breathtakingly reached a staggering mobile subscriber base of 38 smashing million. This figure in itself is 300% of the total industry size in July 2003. And look at where R-Com is as on date. We caught up for an exclusive in-depth conversation with Subroto Das, Head GSM Group, R-Com, who commented, “Reliance Communications has a series of firsts to its credit. Its leadership position across business segments – wireless, global and enterprise broadband – provides the visibility for continued growth and value creation. It not only has the largest fixed wireless and enterprise data customer base in India, but is also the largest wireless data carrier, largest retailer of wireless handsets, largest PCO operator (more than 50% market share), largest carrier of international voice calls (more than 40% market share), as well as being the largest international data provider in India, Middle East and Asia!”
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
Yes, guess the answer. Who is Reliance Communications’
biggest competitor giving Anil sleepless nights? We’ll give you some hints... This is a company that now has India’s largest next generation convergent digital network, comprising over 165,000 kilometers of fibre optic cable, not only in India, but also across the European, American, Middle East continents, apart from Asia-Pacific. If that’s not enough to give the creeps to Anil, fathom this! The company now has the largest fixed wireless customer base; it’s now the largest carrier of wireless data; it has over 50% market share in the enterprise data services category. And of course, it is now the second largest telecom services provider in India with a humongous subscriber base close to 38 whopping million! And it’s not Bharti or Vodafone, or even Tata Teleservices. In fact, the biggest competitor that R-Com is facing as on date... is R-Com itself!!! Because, notwithstanding the potshots he continues taking at the companies around him, the fact is that the Anil Ambani of today is envisioning a telecom future that is completely dominated by R-Com’s products and services, a future where the only space Anil will leave for competition is... outside the industry! That is the future...Cut to 2003, the past! January 14, the industry sees frenetic and frantic activity! The topic: Reliance Infocomm launches Reliance India Mobile in a magnanimous fashion. Competitors feign emotions ranging from openness to straightforward contempt. How much could a new entrant add to market growth? How could petroleum firm managers and energy industry upstarts even think of making head or tail of a sector like telecom? And that too when the launch was on a so-called (outdated?) Qualcomm technology called CDMA, which had never been marketed on such a mass scale by any company in India, public or private. Criticism was cutting and painstakingly harsh, with an objective to prove that the Ambani clan’s telecom dream would remain... just a dream. And then, July happened! On July 1, 2003, Reliance Infocomm presented the now historic marketing move titled ‘Monsoon Hungama’, an offer that allowed any individual to own a mobile phone (and the service) for just Rs.500! Nobody in their wildest imagination could have perceived that this mite of a tactic would pack a punch that would send almost all competitors reeling and bloodied and would also thunderingly rework the sectoral growth forecasts in one go! S. P. Shukla, President, Wireless, R-Com, commented exexclusively to B&E, “We were the first company to say that we will take mobility to the masses. I’m sure everybody recalls the mission statement of our founder Chairman (Dhirubhai Ambani) who said that he would consider the telecom business as having achieved its goal only if it could make mobile telephony available to the masses at a price even cheaper than that of a postcard.”
Think about it. Till July 2003, the total mobile subscriber base of India was just a relatively puny 12.6 million! Airtel was comfortable with 3.07 million, BSNL was ‘cruising’ at 2.26 million, Hutch was competing with its 2.1 million, and others (BPL, Idea Cellular etc) had, yes, others. That is, it took all these companies eight ringing years since the launch of mobile services (in 1995) to reach these figures. The concepts of price wars and handset bundling were strategies that had never before been used in the industry... that is, till the time the ‘Ambani clan’ arrived and showed the world what competitive strategies really meant!
Cut to the present day, December 2007, and you’ll have a hard time digesting the growth figures. The total mobile subscriber base in India has electrifyingly crossed a mind boggling 250 million!!! Although Bharti – with over 51 million subscribers – has maintained its numero uno position (but one gained only after having a first mover’s advantage of 8 long years), there’s a stupendous new claimant to the numbers game. Reliance Communications. In this cutthroat industry that boasts of deeply entrenched and extremely acerbic rivals, and even after being hit by the grim cloud of family estrangement and fallout, Anil Ambani’s R-Com has now breathtakingly reached a staggering mobile subscriber base of 38 smashing million. This figure in itself is 300% of the total industry size in July 2003. And look at where R-Com is as on date. We caught up for an exclusive in-depth conversation with Subroto Das, Head GSM Group, R-Com, who commented, “Reliance Communications has a series of firsts to its credit. Its leadership position across business segments – wireless, global and enterprise broadband – provides the visibility for continued growth and value creation. It not only has the largest fixed wireless and enterprise data customer base in India, but is also the largest wireless data carrier, largest retailer of wireless handsets, largest PCO operator (more than 50% market share), largest carrier of international voice calls (more than 40% market share), as well as being the largest international data provider in India, Middle East and Asia!”
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative
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