The telecom operator is offering a host of benefits to subscribers who on an average contribute a monthly revenue of over Rs 100
In a bid to lure customers from digital platforms, Bharti Airtel is tying up with Flipkart, Netflix, and MakeMyTrip to give customised offers to its subscribers, as per a report in The Economic Times. reported.
Under its privilege membership programme #AirtelThanks, the telecom operator is offering a host of benefits to subscribers who on an average contribute a monthly revenue of over Rs 100. The programme runs on the principle of higher the recharge, the bigger the value of the offers.
Other offers include cash backs in the form of coupon recharges on buying a smartphone from Flipkart.
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The company aims to retain customers longer and generate higher revenues with time. The idea is to make sure a subscriber stays with the firm, Vani Venkatesh, Chief Marketing Officer at Bharti Airtel, told the paper, adding that the telecom firm studied telcos across the globe to form this strategy.
Airtel's move comes amid tough competition among the telecom giants to get more number of subscribers. The cutthroat competition has dragged voice and data prices to all-time lows.
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Analysts believe that Reliance Industries-controlled Reliance Jio Infocomm, which has kept tariffs largely unchanged since January, entered the market in September 2016 with competitive prices, pushing other telecom operators to drop rates.
Thus, operators are looking at other possible ways to retain customers by offering various services and products, which could be monetised later, the report said.
Reliance Jio offers its own digital retail platform, offline retail stores, and content to customise offers for its subscribers.
"Reliance Jio's offerings are compelling telcos to up their game," Jaideep Ghosh, a partner at consultancy firm KPMG, told the paper, adding that currently, traditional sources of plain vanilla telecom services and data services are facing intense pressure and telcos need to branch out into other services.
To achieve this, carriers need to get into partnerships, which is crucial to their future growth, Ghosh said.
Airtel is looking to retain its over 350 million subscribers through tieups for content and data services as it does not have its own content or e-commerce platform, the report said.
"The more you are invested in the brand, the higher differentiated products and more options are thrown to you," Sameer Batra, CEO – Content and Apps, at Bharti Airtel told the paper.
The time seems crucial as the industry has consolidated to three large private players -- Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and Jio -- making it an ideal market situation for pricing power to return over time, the analysts say.
