abhishreshthaa
Abhijeet S
Bharti Cellular Service
Will Bharti Tele-ventures strengths - strong marketing, huge nationwide reach and financial stability - edge out rivals in the western belt in the coming months? And within the scenario of attractive packages, what will actually benefit the customer? These were few of the questions in the minds of many before Bharti’s entry into Mumbai market. Now we have answers to all of them and how it happened.
Bharti follows a generic strategy of cost leadership. The main tactic of Bharti is to garner as much of market share as possible in the first few months of its launch. This is done more so because of the fact that it is not the first player into most of the telecom circles it enters into.
A case in point would be Bharti’s tactic of offering free SMS (Short Messaging Service) in the first three months of its launch in the Mumbai telecom circle. This helped it garner whopping one-lakh customers in forty days. The same tactic was repeated in the Punjab telecom circle – the number of subscribers to its service enabled Punjab to overtake Tamil Nadu as the seventh largest subscriber base.
Bharti was the first operator to introduce 30 second billing to further bring down the cost to the customer. It brought in the concept of free airtime between intra-operator consumers and free airtime for one International, National and Local number without any monthly charges.
Another advantage that Bharti has over its competitors is it’s strong marketing focus and the largest footprint among the various cellular operators in India. Moreover it’s foray into basic telephony and International Long distance service leverages it’s cost leadership strategy.
This strategy has proved to be very effective for Bharti and has helped it secure the top slot although its lead over its nearest competitor is a rather small one.
Will Bharti Tele-ventures strengths - strong marketing, huge nationwide reach and financial stability - edge out rivals in the western belt in the coming months? And within the scenario of attractive packages, what will actually benefit the customer? These were few of the questions in the minds of many before Bharti’s entry into Mumbai market. Now we have answers to all of them and how it happened.
Bharti follows a generic strategy of cost leadership. The main tactic of Bharti is to garner as much of market share as possible in the first few months of its launch. This is done more so because of the fact that it is not the first player into most of the telecom circles it enters into.
A case in point would be Bharti’s tactic of offering free SMS (Short Messaging Service) in the first three months of its launch in the Mumbai telecom circle. This helped it garner whopping one-lakh customers in forty days. The same tactic was repeated in the Punjab telecom circle – the number of subscribers to its service enabled Punjab to overtake Tamil Nadu as the seventh largest subscriber base.
Bharti was the first operator to introduce 30 second billing to further bring down the cost to the customer. It brought in the concept of free airtime between intra-operator consumers and free airtime for one International, National and Local number without any monthly charges.
Another advantage that Bharti has over its competitors is it’s strong marketing focus and the largest footprint among the various cellular operators in India. Moreover it’s foray into basic telephony and International Long distance service leverages it’s cost leadership strategy.
This strategy has proved to be very effective for Bharti and has helped it secure the top slot although its lead over its nearest competitor is a rather small one.