Topic: Marketing Strategies for Fast Paced Growth Environments – A Telecom Perspective

Date: February 19, 2011

Speaker Profile :

Having completed his Electrical Engineering from VJTI, Mumbai, Mr. Sandeep Bangia went on to do Masters in Management Studies from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai University.

He started his career with Hughes Telecom in the year 2000 in the Sales of Enterprise products before moving to Marketing and Product Management. Hughes Telecom was subsequently acquired by Tata Teleservices where amongst other things; he was instrumental in launching Post-paid Mobile services in Mumbai and Maharashtra circles. He then moved on to Reliance Communications in 2004 in the Pre-paid Business and worked with Usage and Revenue Enhancement function. He was actively involved in giving shape to Decision Support Systems and Business Intelligence Systems. He was instrumental in launching many notable products like Reliance Calling cards, the unlimited products and most notably the Reliance GSM services.

He was handling a very strategically important portfolio as the Head of Acquisitions for Pre-paid Mobile – CDMA and GSM before moving on to the current role of Asst. Vice President at Idea Cellular.

Details:

Mr. Sandeep Bangia, Asst. VP of Idea Cellular delivering his talk to the students of KSOM, spoke about the growth drivers in India with respect to the telecom industry.

In the telecom sector, as in most service sectors, consumer behaviour and needs dictate development and define trends. Today’s consumers expect the telecom industry to provide greater speed, richer content and wider applications. Indian telecom sector seems to be at yet another inflection point with the pending introduction of 3G, WiMAX and MNP. The paradigms are changing and the lines between telecom, media, entertainment and IT are beginning to blur.

The growth drivers of telecom sector are as follows:

• Regulation led: Continuous regulatory changes
• Competition led: Intense Competition-highest in world
• Handset led: Falling device prices
• Network Expansion led: Operators expanding deeper
• Economy led: Buoyant economy

We have one of the largest communication networks in the world which is growing at a fast pace. This rapid growth in telecom sector can be attributed to the various pro-active and positive policy measures taken by the government as well as the dynamic and entrepreneurial spirit of the various telecom service providers both in private and public sector. The telecom sector has shown impressive growth during the past decade. Because of this rapid industry growth the learning curve never ends.

Speaking about the evolution of pricing in the Indian telecom Industry he elaborated how this sector is different, unique, exciting and provides opportunity. But with all these facts of growing subscribers, increasing competition, and falling tariffs the big question is “Where is telecom sector headed in India?”

There are newcomers getting ready to enter the market. The operators have paid for 3G spectrum. The government is working on bringing in mobile number portability (MNP). With most subscribers being thoroughly dissatisfied with the quality of calls, MNP will probably result in a huge churn in customer base, as subscribers would be free to experiment with other operators without fear of losing their existing numbers. There could not be a better confluence of factors for a complete overhaul of an industry. And when the size and scale of telecom gets reconfigured, there are going to be some serious winners and losers. In order to strive towards becoming a potential winner, companies have to achieve responsible growth by:

• Innovating: Creating new market niches
• Expanding: Expanding your existing market
• Limiting drift: Protecting your existing market share

With the saturation in the urban markets, the next areas of focus for the operators are the rural and semi urban areas that are still largely untapped and provide a tremendous potential for growth. Therefore you need to choose where you want to be and relegate leadership accordingly.