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Mr Sanjay Kapoor, President, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel, says the company will be a frontrunner in providing affordability services with its Rs 100 recharge, lifetime scheme, and easy lifetime scheme. He also tells about the company's strategies to counter some of the lucrative offers from competitors.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview with Mr Kapoor:

At Bharti, are you specifically taking any competitive measures to counter this move of either the Rs 777 plan, which was launched just about seven-ten days back, and now this new colour variant of 1234 and the sub thousand-rupee mark?

Let us look at some of the facts from the past. If you really compare GSM and CDMA, you will see that GSM has not relied on the service providers to proliferate the market with handsets.

They have been using both handset — terminal-led strategies and non-terminal led strategies. In case of CDMA, the proliferation of handsets is largely dependent on the operator than service provider. So in the past, we expanded the market through Rs 100 recharge, through lifetime scheme, easy lifetime scheme and you will see that Bharti will be in the forefront of leading this affordability perspective to broaden the market and horizon.

Don't you think that when the price of the phone has been cut to as low as Rs 777, there could be a legitimate challenge for the GSM variety not just for Airtel but for the entire GSM space?

We have seen in the recent past that whenever we have gone to the market with the handsets, it is not necessarily the price points alone that has led to the expansion of the market.

In fact, when we did some for Motorola handsets a while back, we saw that the demand for colour had really outstripped the black and white handsets. I think brands are important to the customers in the market place other than features. Otherwise, Nokia would not have more than 70 per cent market share in the marketplace.

Is there any reaction coming from you in terms of any offer?

As our strategy, we do deal with handsets and you will see a lot of handsets are being offered to our customers at various price points across the country. But our ability to expand the market will happen through both handset and non-handset led strategies.

You have mentioned on the Happy Recharge, what was the response to this particular offering in the month of April?

It is too early, we have started advertising this product just about three-four days back. We believe it is a strategy, which has actually got dual objectives.

At Rs 249 end, it has the propensity to expand the market as it offers complete talk time. But it offers better value for money to the existing customers on the Rs 399 and Rs 499 price points.

More Stories on : Interview | Telecommunications | Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd

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