Very soon you will hear echoes in your vegetable market like, “Suniye, Suniye….., Reliance Mango Hungama; 1000 rupiah aam lou aur 100 rupiah cell phone call mufat karo” (Translated in English – Reliance Mango offer; Buy Mangoes worth Rs1000 and get to make 100 rupees worth cell phone calls free on Reliance). Now get ready to accept an offer from your vegetable salesman for cell phone.
Reliance and Tata telecom are all set to woo the rural masses of India. Their choice of channel partners are the intermediaries between villagers and the town/city businessmen like vegetable vendors, water-pump and pipes dealers, pesticide vendors, etc. Rural markets are something which the corporate India had ignored for a long time until the country’s largest consumer giant, Hindustan Lever Limited woke up to service their needs in early 2000. Now Reliance & Tata’s have not only identified this as a potential market, but they are also under Universal Service Obligation (USO) from the Communications and IT Ministry.
Reliance is optimistic about tapping over 6 lakh customers in 6000 villages of which 4000 villages already have Reliance conectivity now. Tata’s who were confused with which technology to adapt are slow in the game as they have substantial investments in GSM service provider Idea Cellular and now going with CDMA. Tata’s are having just 70 lakh customers and are hoping to add 20 lakhs more by the end of March 2006 of which majority thrust will be on rural customers mostly from the states of Karnataka, MP, UP(East and West), Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.
Convergence.In Broadband.Out
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