2004-11-Jan

Encouraged by the response to its recent innovative packages, IDEA Cellular India is planning to go aggressive on ChitChat, its pre-paid cellular service.

The company expects that the pre-paid segment will constitute about 90 per cent of its total business within the next few months. Currently, about 80 per cent of the company’s total business comes from the pre-paid category.

“Our decision to introduce the Rs 99 starter pack and a lower outgoing tariff at Rs 1.49 per minute were later followed by our competitors. This has resulted in a substantial growth in our pre-paid card sales,” Sukanta Dey, chief marketing officer of IDEA Cellular, said.

According a Business Standard report, IDEA Cellular recently announced a free ChitChat connection on every purchase of a Nokia handset. It has also announced the lowest-ever SMS rates on pre-paid cards at just 30 paise per message.

IDEA's subscriber base, which has been growing at a slower pace in the last few months in the Andhra Pradesh circle compared with its competitors’ numbers, has started growing rapidly after these measures.

To attract more customers, the company is now working on a few more value-added services. “On an all-India basis, we have grown at a faster rate compared to our competitors. With our operations spread in just five circles, we have grown to 2 million subscribers, while Airtel, which operates in 16 circles, has four million subscribers,” Dey said. “We added the second one million subscribers in just a year's time because of our foray into the Delhi market,” Dey was quoted saying by the financial daily.

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