Tatas to raise stake in Virgin Mobile

Tata Teleservices is looking to increase its stake in its joint venture with Virgin Mobile India, where it has 50 per cent ownership. According to television reports, the Richard Branson-led Virgin group could be selling some of its stake to Tata Teleservices.

Both Tata Teleservices and Virgin Mobile offered no comments on the development. Reports, however, say that Virgin Mobile brand will continue to exist and Tata will have to shell out royalty for using the brand name.

Virgin Mobile India is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which uses spectrum of Tatas, to market its brand. The number of subscribers of Virgin Mobile is not revealed. However, they are counted in Tata’s subscribers, which are now at around 80 million.

Virgin Mobile India launched its CDMA services in March 2008, and GSM services in January last year. The Virgin brand, which exclusively targets the youth section, offers its services in all the circles where Tata is present. The services pan across all the 22 circles in CDMA and 18 circles for GSM technology.

The company had earlier said it plans to acquire as much as 10 per cent market share among the youth, and had offered innovative schemes wherein a consumer gets 10 paise credited into the account balance for an incoming call.

Tata Teleservices has its own brands Tata Indicom for CDMA services and Tata Docomo, a joint venture with Japanese major for GSM services. The company has around 11 per cent market share in the mobile services market.