Rank 2: Merger to Rescue-VODAFONE INDIA

Vodafone is now set to conquer the telecom war in India with all its strength as the merger with Idea--country’s third largest operator—is initiated after getting all necessary approvals.

The operator facing the competition as well as a kind of uncertainty for most of the period during the financial year 2017-18, caused the operator to earn 18.4% less than the previous fiscal year.

The competitive edge with Vodafone is that it has surpassed all operators in the IoT services for enterprises globally. This has already given the operator an edge over the competition in India as well and is positioned ahead of others to cater to rising IoT or M2M services that enterprises are looking for.

As the focus of telecom services shifts towards B2B for strengthening services in enterprises as well as offering IoT services through B2B2C channels, Vodafone is in a strong position with a proven record of such services even in India.

Vodafone offers VoLTE services over limited Smartphones in 13 telecom circles out of the total 22 circles. Alike Airtel, its VoLTE services have also not seen the kind of uptake that has happened in the case of Jio.

The operator also strengthened its OTT portfolio by launching its TV app that has Live as well as on-demand content available for users.

Vodafone after completing the merger process with Idea shall be uniquely positioned catering to the upper as well as the lower layer of the subscribers. The typical alignment so far was that Vodafone had high paying subscribers while Idea had penetrated most at the lower levels of subscribers, who have less ARPU but are more in volume. With the merger, the makeover entity of Vodafone shall be positioned to cater to the needs of both ends of consumers as well as offer new and emerging services to the enterprises in India.

The new team for Vodafone-Idea merged entity has also been announced recently. While the two key portfolios of CEO and CTO have gone to Vodafone veterans, Idea leadership has been entrusted with Operations, Marketing, IT and Finance roles. Other key roles have also been distributed among key people coming from Vodafone or Idea.

Interestingly realising the strength of Vodafone in the enterprise domain, Nick Gliddon has been entrusted to head the enterprise business of the merged entity. This could be seen as a smart step by the operator where they could leverage the existing competencies within the enterprise segment.

Vodafone, having its identity in red, though reflecting thriving, energetic, and a youthful brand has not been too aggressive on marketing compared to the competition. The operation shall have to now get consistently aggressive in outreach as it takes charge of an important entity in the telecommunications landscape in India. It has to give up its shyness and talk a lot more about what it has to offer both on the consumer as well as enterprise sides of the business. The other thing it has to be wary of is now coming in the view of the challenger brand, Jio. So far, the incumbents were primarily represented by Airtel, which bear the maximum brunt of the onslaught that Jio is on with. Now as Vodafone also becomes a strong entity, Jio shall be strategizing on taking it aggressively on.

Summarily, Vodafone is all geared to kick-start the next wave of hyper-competitiveness in the market where it will take heads on with Jio, which will attempt to keep eroding its subscriber base as well as the one acquired via Idea.