|
| Rajesh Kurup: Tata Tele's power surge |
| Rajesh Kurup / New Delhi Sep 07, 2009, 00:33 IST |
|
Who would expect someone who has worked in the power sector all his life, and the formative part of that in the public sector, to be a gamechanger in, of all the sectors, telecom? But that’s exactly what Anil Kumar Sardana is doing in Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL). Two years ago, when Group Chairman Ratan Tata brought in Sardana as TTSL’s managing director, most raised their eyebrows. Today, they’re willing to concede the move to bring in an electrical engineer from the Delhi College of Engineering wasn’t that rash — Sardana is also a post-graduate in cost accounting and in management.
Last week, TTSL launched its pay-per-call service, a tariff plan that turns on its head the conventional wisdom of levying charges on the basis of a pulse rate (each pulse is a 60-second slot). Under the plan, irrespective of the duration, a call will cost Re 1 within a telecom circle and Rs 3 across different telecom circles within the country. SMS, or short messaging services, will be available for 50 paise per message, irrespective of them being a local or national SMSes.
Since most calls average around 2-3 minutes, this plan will save consumers a lot of money. According to Sardana, customers typically keep 2-3 SIM cards to take advantage of schemes offered by various companies and so his challenge was to ensure his service was the service of first choice. More important, as long as his network is not fully loaded with customers, Sardana’s logic is that it doesn’t hurt to give some freebies. It will, of course, hurt if the customers make too many calls to other networks since, at 20 paise a minute for interconnection fees, Sardana may have to shell out a lot of money — his view, however, is that while the call minutes will spurt initially, over a period of time, the average call duration will settle to a couple of minutes.
Sardana calls the scheme a gamechanger and many others in the industry agree, even though grudgingly. While the competition is taking solace in the belief that this could be a promotional scheme — a promotional scheme should run for a minimum of six months as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) norms — they admit that a churn to the Tata network could start soon.
In August, the company had launched a one-second billing format, once again going against the conventional pulse-based billing. The scheme was launched for GSM operators, starting with the southern circles in the country. This means if a customer talks for 31 seconds, she gets billed for 31 seconds instead of for one minute. According to HSBC Global Research, if all telecom companies followed Sardana’s example, this would lower the sector’s revenue by 10-15 per cent.
Sardana was also instrumental in the NTT DoCoMo deal, which resulted in the Japanese telecom major acquiring a 26 per cent stake in TTSL. The companies launched GSM service under the joint brand, Tata DoCoMo.
Prior to joining TTSL, Sardana was the executive director of Tata Power Company. He began his career as an engineering trainee with the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), and worked in areas of core engineering, project management and operations. In 1994, he left the corporation to join BSES as its vice president and head of corporate business development. He was tipped to become the head of the BSES power operations in Delhi when it won the bid for two of the distribution circles in Delhi, but quit the day before and became the head of the Tata power company that won the third Delhi circle. Later, he became the managing director and CEO of the company.
Whether Sardana succeeds in wooing customers is yet to be seen but, for many, the fact that the a staid Tata company is trying disruptive strategies is itself a gamechanger.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Read Business news in |  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Advertisements |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Content Guide
