'4G will help in building the future of the brand' : S Krishnan, CTO, Videocon Telecommunications

You are targeting 100 cities in 100 days of operation, and 100 mn subscribers in 3 years. How do you plan to achieve this target?

Tying up with partners like Amdocs and IBM for systems integration has really helped. Just before our launch, we implemented a complete suite from Amdocs called CES 7.5, that fits our target of a customer single view for prepaid/postpaid, cost product marketing and measuring customer behaviour to serve him/her better across all verticals, be it SME, postpaid or prepaid. With a plan to launch postpaid in a few months, we will implement Amdocs' billing/CRM entire BSS suite platform. Besides this, IBM being the most experienced SI, used by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea as well, has helped to improve speed to market and minimise risk. This has helped Videocon Mobile perform much better in the first three months of operations as compared to any other operator, and will be key to helping us achieve our targets.

What are your launch strategies?

The process of operation start-up got underway in 2007, and we got a pan-India license in January 2008. On 25th March, we commercially launched services, and now have approximately 2.5 mn subscribers all over the country in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Punjab, Harayana, Mumbai and Gujarat - with the biggest customer base from Mumbai.

You were not able to secure 3G or BWA spectrum. Will this put pressure on you from MVNOs?

We will not lose out to MVNO greenfield operators even without 3G/BWA. A case in point is Europe where not many people use 3G for voice – 2G has reached 4 bn all over the world, while 3G is still about 200 mn; thus, 3G won't succeed or help the company's bottomline. Besides, lack of in-building penetration from femtocells causing problems in coverage will still exist. Thus, we made a conscious decision not to go in for 3G, as this is not the technology of tomorrow. We will join the spectrum race when a good technology comes in, and to that end we are looking forward to 4G – as we strongly believe in a leapfrog to technology which will sustain customers and help in building the future of the brand.

So till 4G comes in, is there any other technology that you are looking at deploying?

Yes, we will make use of the Evolved Edge technology, which is similar to 3G, in the sense that while Edge offers 384 Kbps, Evolved Edge will offer 1 Mbps. This technology implemetation has been a little delayed, but should come in the next 6-9 months. We will also extend this technology to urban areas and offer 2.99G.

How will MNP affect you?

MNP is a big opportunity for greenfield operators like us. Three factors that help us have an advantage over the rest are value for money, brand history (Videocon brand backing), and the fact they we strictly follow the Indian cycle of market trends. Customer attrition is quite high making costs shoot up, and acquisition costs are directly related to churn rate, which is the main problem for established operators in MNP.

So what are some successful deployment strategies that you can share with other greenfield operators looking to invest in India?

Engaging customers with superior self-service (giving them the option to access us anywhere, anytime) through self-service kiosks at maximum locations, keeping an outlook of customer retention, etc. We used quick strategies because of good support from IBM and Amdocs, and good customer enablement (AMSS). Besides this, we concentrated on levearging on existing retail strength of Videocon at popular outlets and used these and dealer channels as customer touch points from day 1, employed a shop-n-shop approach, and provided coverage bandwidth for service from day one at these outlets. Other operators took 10 years to reach coverage bandwidth, which is a plus point for us. Another USP is that we are a completely outsourced model, BPO partners become an extention of our organisation, which is a unique model, having very lean staff.

What are you doing towards going green?

Here there are two aspects – one is whether an operator can radiate more power by using good technology, as the biggest challenge is protecting customers from radiation. Secondly, more towers add to visual pollution, and thus we are renting towers, and other best technology to ensure minimal radiation. We are also keen on tower sharing – both active and passive. For active sharing, field trials are currently in progress, and we are looking at passive sharing in rural areas, which will also help us to increase our rural subscriber base, with a better footprint. Cost of building such a network is no doubt high, but benefits are higher, so we are looking to collaborate with partners for the same.

On the rural front, what are you doing to tap these customers who make up a great part of the emerging mobile market?

Rural customers have different needs, and we endeavour to breach language barriers and offer the same services as other customers in urban areas are getting. Thus, we have three objectives for rural subscribers – cost, convenience and speed of accessing information. In rural areas, education, roads, health, transport and infrastructure are all major handicaps, for which telecom has to provide a solution, and those who put in fundamental technology will succeed – this is another reason why we haven't gone in for 3G.

What is your future focus?

We will continue to focus on optimisation of costs, making use of an optimised model of operation – some services are therefore under us, while some are outsourced to expert partners with wholesale pricing. We also have an established brand base, and will not splurge on technology, unless it brings benefits to the customer. We will also leverage current strengths and other retail business, our retail and distribution is yet unmatched than any other telco. We expect to launch in UP, Maharashtra, MP and AP by July-end, and are expecting 12.5 mn subscribers by December 2010. As stated earlier, we are also looking at tapping 100 mn subscribers withing three years of operations.

berylm@cybermedia.co.in