CEO Gopal Vittal unveils Bharti Airtel's roadmap for success: Quality, coverage, and innovation
Gopal Vittal said that the company is mulling to go live with its standalone (SA) technology for Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) within the second quarter of the current fiscal year
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From increasing the "quality" customer base to expanding network coverages, Bharti Airtel Limited's Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Gopal Vittal has shared a "five pillar" strategy after the telecom major posted a 158% rise in profit to Rs 4,160 crore in the first quarter of FY25. According to Vittal, the company plans to expand services like WiFi and coverage offers to the 60 million households in the country that contribute almost 35% of industry revenues.
"We will leverage our digital targeting capabilities and deliver a brilliant experience to the customers to retain them for longer," Vittal said during the Q1 earning call held earlier this month.
He mentioned that the company has plans to go live with its standalone (SA) technology for Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) within the second quarter of the current fiscal year. In the SA mode, the network is built only on 5G, and in NSA mode the 5G network is built as a top-up on existing layers such as 4G, 3G, 2G radio networks.
Vittal expressed confidence in non-mobile portfolio homes and B2B. He said that the telecom major has taken three structural actions for the B2B segment, such as focusing on training the account managers, expanding coverage of small and medium businesses across the country by investing in sales capacity and digital tooling, and improving the network infrastructure.
Bharti Airtel is also focusing on leveraging its digital capabilities to incubate new revenue streams. Vittal said, "We would continue to look for bolt-on acquisitions in adjacencies (IoT, cloud, security, SD-WAN, and Airtel Finance to strengthen and build capabilities to address growing customer needs," he added.
On low network coverages in a rural region, Mittal said the company is working on reducing the coverage gap, and added, "The key focus here is to sweat investments optimally to accelerate the share gains".
The last pillar of Bharti Airtel's strategy is the "War on Waste". Mittal said that the company has stepped up its "solarisation agenda with over 15,000 sites solarised in the last fiscal and over 6,000 sites solarised in this quarter alone".
Mittal concluded by saying that the company would continue to invest in infrastructure to win quality customers with a focus on the War on Waste and prudent capital allocation.
During the Q1 FY25, Bharti Airtel renewed the spectrum that was expiring in six circles with a total purchase of Rs 6,850 crore. The company fully prepaid an advance payment of the spectrum dues pertaining to the 2012 and 2015 auctions. In the past year, Bharti prepaid over Rs 24,250 crore of high-cost spectrum dues.
The telecom giant ended the quarter with a 5G customer base of 90 million. In the broadband business, Bharti Airtel added 3,50,000 customers. ARPU came in at Rs 211 compared to Rs 209 in Q4, driven by upgradation to smartphones, postpaid, data monetization, and international roaming penetration.
