India’s third-largest telecom network Vodafone Idea (Vi) is betting big on digital offerings to claw back market share after the Union government intervened in January this year by buying out a stake in the company to prevent the sector from turning into a duopoly.
Vi accounts for 22.83% subscriber share in the market, versus that of its competitors Reliance Jio (35.37%) and Airtel (31.55%), as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) March 2022 data.
In the last six months, the company has forayed into newer spaces such as music, gaming, Wi-fi devices, Internet-of-Things (IoT), jobs platform, upskilling and education.
Vi’s rivals Jio and Airtel have already established a strong digital footprint through their own platforms. While India’s largest telecom network Jio is home to JioTV, JioCinema, JioSaavn and JioGameslite, Airtel is the parent of Airtel Xstream, Airtel DTH and Airtel Wynk music.
Unlike its competitors, Vi has no plans of launching its own platforms. It is instead banking on its tie-ups with domain experts such as Nazara Technologies (for gaming) and Hungama Music (for music streaming) to win subscribers.
“In our approach of digital as a strategy, we feel tying up with the expert in the job would help us better rather than investing heavily in setting up our platforms in those spaces,” said Vi’s chief operations officer, Abhijit Kishore.
In April, Vi tied up with job search platform Apna, English learning portal Enguru and competitive exam preparation site Pariksha. This came after it partnered with Nazara in March for gaming services. In December 2021, it joined hands with Hungama Music to allow its customers to stream music at no additional cost for the first six months.
Some of these digital assets have enhanced the time spent by its customers on the company’s application. The app downloads, too, have increased by 30-40% and the sale of WiFi devices has also seen 2x growth in the last five months, Kishore said.
Analysts were less enthusiastic about Vi’s latest offerings.
“The consumer entertainment wallet today is saturated, has plateaued in size and is increasingly fragmented: this gives little room for growth,” said Utkarsh Sinha, Managing Director of boutique advisory firm Bexley Advisors.
“The way forward for that is through fundamental, bottom-up thinking; Jio’s lead in that is quite formidable and although it can be done, they would be a tough act to follow,” he added.
While a lot of Vi’s new services are being offered at no additional cost, in some cases albeit for a limited period, the company is not keen on monetising them any time soon.
“All these services that you see, whether it is entertainment, education, upskilling or jobs, we have been very focused on selecting them. There are other domains like travel, but we want to focus on what our customers want. Eventually, gaming and music will get monetised. But we are not thinking about monetisation currently,” he said.