Oversize #10: Airtel’s realization: diversify or die

In 2013, India had about a dozen operators serving a little over 700 million subscribers. Bharti Airtel Ltd led with a quarter of the market share. In 2016 (before Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd started services), the number of operators had reduced to eight, while the active subscribers had crossed 900 million.

The Indian mobile telephony market is more consolidated now with three private operators—Airtel, Jio, and Vi (Vodafone Idea Ltd, which rebranded itself as Vi recently)—and one government operator, BSNL. We are talking a billion subscribers with Airtel and Jio controlling about a third of the market each. While Jio …

Author

Abhishek Baxi

Abhishek writes on technology trends, gadgets and SMBs, and has over a decade of experience—both as an industry watcher as well as a participant. He quit Microsoft in 2011 to become an independent digital consultant, and to write more, travel randomly, watch a lot of movies and wake up late on weekdays.

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