Bharti Airtel today announced that it has crossed the 40 million-mobile customer milestone. With this, Bharti Airtel becomes the first Indian mobile services provider and the 10th in the world* to join an exclusive list of global telecom operators with more than 40 million customers from a single-country. This landmark customer base was achieved in just 12 years, making Bharti Airtel one of the fastest companies to make it to this exclusive list.
The last 12 months have witnessed Bharti Airtel dominating the Indian telecom space and recording spectacular growth, both in terms of customers and revenues. This remarkable achievement is highlighted by the fact that it took Airtel 11 years to reach the 20 million customer landmark and just another 13 months to add the next 20 million customers.
The Company’s overall wireless market share catapulted to over 23.2% as of April 2007 from 20.4% as reported in FY06. In fact, Bharti Airtel has increased its lead over all other operators in the marketplace and these increases have been substantial. For instance, Airtel’s lead over Hutch has widened from 2 million in March 2006 to over 11 million in April 2007. Similarly, Airtel’s lead over Idea and BSNL has increased from 11 million to 24 million and from 0.5 million to 8 million, respectively. More significantly, Airtel’s swing over Reliance Communications has increased by 10.7 million customers – from a deficit of 1.7 million to a lead of 9 million. This achievement is noteworthy in the highly competitive Indian telecom industry.
Mr. Sanjay Kapoor, President, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel Limited said, “Last year we created history by significantly increasing our market share and distancing ourselves from our competitors. The 40 million customer milestone is indeed a remarkable achievement not only for us at Airtel, but also for the country as it clearly underscores the coming of age of Indian companies in the international telecom arena.â€
Currently, Airtel is present in nearly 4,700 census towns and over 200,000 non-census towns and villages covering 59% of the country’s population. The company plans to aggressively roll out more than 30,000 cell sites in FY08 to increase its population coverage to 70%.
Airtel has consistently established benchmarks for the Indian telecom industry and transformed the face of the industry through strategic initiatives in a challenging and competitive landscape. The Company’s philosophy of delivering value and high quality service to its customers combined with a strong business leadership has made Airtel a force to reckon with, not just in India but globally.