Telenor outpaces itself, sets new world record of 472 new stores in India

NEW DELHI: The Norway-based telecom company Telenor India has opened 472 stores simultaneously across six circles on 26 August, 2015 and bettered its own Guinness Book record.

"Last week Guinness Book of World Records certified Telenor India for “Most Stores Launched Simultaneously"," claimed by the company.

Sharad Mehrotra, Chief Executive Officer, Telenor India said, “The Guinness record is a testimony of the hard work and perfect planning of a highly passionate and motivated team. At Telenor we have constantly worked on retail presence to be closer to our customer. Along with our network modernisation plan, this will improve service experience and help subscribers enjoy our affordable products. With initiatives like Grahak Siksha Kendras (customer education hubs) and free life insurance we are converting our retail stores into one stop destination for all telecom needs.”

Rigorous ground work involving 110 days of planning and precise coordination across six circles led to the successful launch of 472 stores simultaneously in a single day. The launch of these stores was planned at strategic locations to ensure service up to the last mile with enhanced sales and service experience for customers.

With this new record, Telenor India has become the only company in the world to have the distinction of achieving largest store expansion twice in two consecutive years. Telenor opened 362 stores to enter the Guinness Book of World Records in April 2014. This remained unbeaten by any other operator (or any retail group) till last year when Telenor decided to improve its previous number.

Upanga Dutta, Chief Marketing Officer, Telenor India said, "An expansion of this scale would take months in normal course. But by accelerating the process, Telenor has successfully gone deeper with its retail footprint across its markets in one stroke. With the increased reach and availability of Telenor products and services, it will help us fulfill our strategic ambition of being ‘Loved by Customers’.”

Telenor India has one of the largest retail network in the telecom sector with 392,000 point of sales and the addition of these 472 stores takes the overall exclusive retail footprint of Telenor to over 2070 stores. This vast network of retail stores is supported by an in-house automated distribution management system. The DMS gives a competitive edge to Telenor by collecting real time data of inventory, logistics and customer buying trends among other things. The collected data helps in formulating better distribution strategies and brings cost synergies in the system.

The DMS was developed for India and has now been replicated in other Telenor business units in Asia such Thailand, Myanmar and Telenor business units in Europe.