Orange Lines Up Slew Of Incentives

Cellphone services brand Orange (formerely Max Touch) has started dolling out its international recipes for the local users.

After making the monthly cellular rentals cheaper by Rs 80 to Rs 395 as against The rate of Rs 475 finalised by the Delhi High court, the company is unleashing yet another set of customer-friendly schemes.

Earlier, cellular operators were charging a monthly rental of Rs 600. The Delhi High Court had asked the cellular operators to reimburse the difference of Rs 125 to its subscribers with retrospective effect from November 1999.

From tody, while 1.33 lakh Orange subscribers will be reimbursed the differenc in rentals of around Rs 205 (Rs 600 less Rs 395), the committed time in their respective schemes to the next month.

 

Further, the unutilised timings can be accumulated for usage for six months.

At present the unutilised timings are not carried forward to the following month.

The reimbursement will be in one-time payment rather than making provisions in the monthly bills. The outgo for the company is expected to be around Rs 2.72 crore.

Explaning the rationale, the company chief operative officer Snadip Das said "the two new measures are intended to add base value to our customers who will receive a lot of relief from these measures."

Globally, Orange stands for transparency and honesty, Das said adding that this would be followed in true sprit in India also. He described these measures as the values associated with Orange taking off in India.

On impact on the cellular industry, the measures are expected to increase the customer base in the country to around 10 lakh by 2002-03 from the present 3 lakh. "We believe in expanding the cellular industry and thereby adding our customer base," Das said.

All these measures are expected to remove the barriers to entry into the cellular market.

However he said categorically "we are not competing on a lower price, but by offering a fair value to our customers".

Industry observers said the company is planning to offer more sops to its customers in future to add the customer base.

However Das is silent on the forthcoming value addition offerings, but said there are many more to add to the present list.