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Business News : Four companies, including Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance group and Bharti Airtel, on Monday collectively submitted 11 bids for three Anil Ambani group companies, which are up for sale as going concerns as part of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) process. The three companies for sale are Reliance Communications (RCom), Reliance Telecom (which holds the spectrum), and Reliance Infratel (which controls the tower and fibre assets). RCom also owns real estate and enterprise businesses. The bids were opened by the committee of creditors, which held a meeting that continued until late night on Monday in Mumbai. It will meet again on Friday to discuss and possibly finalise the winning bids for the three companies The value of the financial bids as well as which companies they have bid for, however, could not be ascertained. Read Complete Article

In a war for the control of India’s billion-plus mobile-services market, tycoon Sunil Mittal seems to be floundering in the face of a juggernaut unleashed by Mukesh Ambani . For at least a fourth quarter in a row, Mittal’s Bharti Airtel Ltd. shored up its profits with one-time gains, masking headwinds posed by upstart Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. Jio’s roll-out, after its 2016 debut, has knocked Airtel from its perch in a consolidation that shrank the industry to three players from about a dozen four years ago. Airtel is struggling to add subscribers in a saturated market after Jio managed to lure more than 300 million users over the past three years -- a quarter of the world’s second-largest market. The aggressive expansion of Jio with free calls and cheaper data, backed by the deep pockets of Asia’s richest man, was bad news for highly indebted incumbents engaged in a tariff war that had pushed call rates to less than a cent. Shriveling earnings portend further trouble for Airte...

India’s largest telecommunications service provider and Amazon India , on Friday announced a strategic partnership with an aim to jointly drive smartphone adoption across the country. Millions of Indians can now become first time owners of a 4G smartphone or upgrade to an advanced 4G smartphone of their choice at an affordable price from amongst a wide range of devices starting at an effective price of only Rs 3399. NEW DELHI: Bharti AirtelNSE -1.70 % and online retailer Amazon have partnered together to sell low-cost 4G smartphones at effective prices of Rs 3,399, under the carrier's Mera Pehla Smartphone plan. Customers buying any phone from over 65 Amazon.in exclusive 4G smartphones brands including Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honour, LG, Lenovo & Moto amongst others, will get a total cashback of Rs 2600. Of this, Rs 2000 will be given by Airtel over a period of 36 months and the additional c .. Vani Venkatesh, Chief Marketing Officer, Bharti Airtel said, “The par...

India’s leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel is doling out free 30GB additional 4G data to subscribers who opt-in as beta testers for the company’s voice over long-term evolution (VoLTE) services before its official launch. Recently, Airtel had rolled out VoLTE services in Mumbai, Maharashtra, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, Karnataka and Chennai. In the next batch, the telecom operator is gearing up to initialise the VoLTE services in West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, Kerala, Bihar, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh. Before the service launch, however, Airtel is testing its network and seeking subscribers who would like to beta-test the services and provide regular feedback before launch. As an incentive, the telecom operator is offering additional 30GB 4G LTE data to beta testers which will be credited to subscribers accounts in three tranches. ALSO READ: Reliance Jio Prime membership subscription to end on March 31: What next? To avai...

Home-grown e-commerce major Flipkart seems to have removed the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus from its portal before the start of the smartphones’ official sale on March 16. The flagship smartphones were first announced a day before the Mobile World Congress and unveiled in India on March 6. The pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ began in India through Samsung online stores soon after the international unveiling at the MWC. However, Samsung’s partner for online sales, Airtel online store and Flipkart, had started taking pre-orders after the official launch on March 6. Starting March 6, Flipkart not only started taking the pre-orders but also listed the two smartphones as bundled with offers like Rs 5,000 additional discount on exchange, cashback of Rs 6,000 for HDFC credit and debit card holders and no-cost equated monthly instalments removing the interest component from EMIs paid to banks on the purchase of devices using a credit card. The ...

Aimed at broadening their consumer base in smartphone segment, country's two leading telecom players Bharti Airtel and Vodafone have tied up with Samsung for cashback offers worth Rs 1,500 on select Galaxy J-series devices over a period of two years. Airtel will offer the scheme on Galaxy J2 (2017) , Galaxy J5 Prime, Galaxy J7 Prime, and Galaxy J7 Pro priced in the range of Rs 6,990 to Rs 19,900. Under the offer, Vodafone will give cashback on three models Galaxy J2 Pro, priced at Rs 8,490; Galaxy J7 Nxt, Rs 10,490; and Galaxy J7, Rs 16,900. Samsung smartphones for Airtel customers will come bundled with special recharge pack of Rs 199 that offers 1GB data per day and unlimited calling within India. While Airtel customers will need to recharge with a total value of Rs 5,000, Vodafone users will have to recharge their account every month with Rs 198 (total value Rs 4,752 over a period of two years) to avail full benefit of cashback scheme, as per the companies...

Telecom major Bharti Airtel is likely to shut down 3G service in next 3-4 years and reframe the spectrum linked with it for 4G services, a top official of the company said. "There is almost no spent that we are doing on 3G. Our view is in next 3-4 years we are likely to see 3G network actually shut down faster than 2G network because there are still 50 per cent of phone being shipped out in India that are feature phones," Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India and South Asia, Bharti Airtel, said during earnings call on Wednesday. He said that the company is investing in 4G technology to build more data capacity in the network. The company will use 2100 megahertz band, which is used for 3G services, for 4G services. "Where we have the second carrier of 3G or third carrier then through the flip of software you get incremental capacity on 3G. Most of that spectrum will finally go towards 4G for which we will need to have radio units," Vittal said. He s...

It is a well-accepted fact that everything Reliance Industries (RIL) does has ‘scale’, but what the recently conducted annual general meeting (AGM) of the company did, has established it as a corporate giant with ‘style’ along with substance. Right from the town-hall styled full-screen visuals in the backdrop to the peek into the privileged footage of Dhirubhai Ambani’s journey through various milestones, to the dramatic suspense-laden announcement of the pricing of the Jio Phone as a postscript to Mukesh Ambani’s speech — all of it made for a captivating and engaging piece for shareholders and investors across the spectrum. However, those 100 minutes of the AGM aforementioned have arguably but unequivocally begun the process of changing the economic landscape of our country in years to come. What RIL has launched in the form of an affordable Jio Phone handset is not just a great tweak to the business model that the company is likely to follow to make itself profitable, but ...

The country's top mobile operator, Bharti Airtel , will be investing Rs 2,000 crore over three years in the launch of various digital offerings even as the telco gears up to launch Voice over LTE (VoLTE) across the country by the end of this year. Airtel has announced a few initiatives like allowing postpaid customers to carry forward their unused data to the next billing cycle, pooling of postpaid plan within a family and providing protection for smartphones against damage. Gopal Vittal, managing director and chief executive, India and South Asia, Bharti Airtel, said VoLTE trials are on in five cities and the company will be "able to take VoLTE" everywhere in the country by the end of this year. The company, which is scrambling ever since Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio entered telecom last year, is boosting its offerings to retain customers and improve experience. As part of Project Next, Airtel will improve its in-store experience by redesigning over 2,500...

Financial News : Reliance Jio has begun to witness a slowdown in active subscriber additions. For the first time since September, when Jio stormed into the market, Bharti Airtel has added more active subscribers than Jio. As per reports by Goldman Sachs and ICICI Securities, Jio added 0.4 million active subscribers in April as compared to 2.6 million by Airtel. During the September-October period of last year Jio was adding around 16 million subscribers a month. However, in terms of net additions, Jio continues to add maximum subscribers. It added 3.87 million subscribers in April followed by 2.85 million by Airtel, 0.81 million by BSNL, 0.75 million by Vodafone and 0.68 million by Idea. All other operators lost subscribers on net basis in April. Jio has witnessed a deceleration in its active subscribers in fourth straight month and since the company has started to charge its users from April, the deceleration is likely to continue. However, given the scale of Jio’s lau...

Even as the incumbent telcos talk about decreasing profitability in business, the latest entrant on the block Reliance Jio feels that telecom continues to remain one of the highest profitable sectors with an Ebitda margin of 30 per cent and the 'so-called' financial stress has been caused by the old operators themselves as they did not invest in equity as well as in new technology but kept on taking more debt. Jio, which presented its views while meeting the inter-ministerial group (IMG) today, is believed to have said though incumbent operators have made significant returns over the years, they have not invested in equity. Jio said the financial stress has been caused due to aggressive financing strategies and not investing in new technologies, even though the sector fundamentals remain robust. Also Jio blamed the top three operators -- Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular -- of cartelisation which led to the financial stress of smaller operators. Jio further added thes...

Barely a week after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) asked   Reliance Jio   to withdraw its complimentary offer, the telecom operator on Tuesday announced a new plan of 1 GB 4G data for three months at Rs 309 for its Prime members. Rival Airtel, however, dubbed it as a case of “old wine in a new bottle.” Announcing its new offer, Jio said under the Rs 309 plan, it would provide “unlimited SMS, calling and data (1GB per day at 4G speed) for three months on the first recharge”. For Rs 509, the company is offering unlimited SMS, calling and double the data (2GB per day) for three months on the first recharge. “ Considering the special benefits that are available to Jio Prime members, customers who were unable to subscribe to Jio Prime for any reason can continue to do so by paying Rs 408 or Rs 608 (Jio Prime and recharge price) to avail these benefits,” said Jio in a statement. The benefits of the plan would be available right away. Jio customers who h...

The unlimited Rs 303 data plan for   Reliance Jio  prime members with free voice is expected to dent the premium subscriber base of the sector including those of the big three - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular --to the tune of 17 per cent. This is assuming that the premium data subscribers pay an average of Rs 600 per month. While there are about 350 million data subscribers, about 100 million are in the premium category.   Analysts at Motilal Oswal Securities say that if the downtrading were to happen from the higher average revenue per user (ARPU) level of Rs 600 to Rs 303, the sector will be impacted to the tune of Rs 35,640 crore a year. The larger players will be affected more as their ARPUs are much higher than the Rs 303 tariff of RJio.  Of Bharti Airtel’s overall subscriber base of 266 million, about 55 million are data subscribers who pay an average of data ARPU of Rs 174.7. Vodafone and Idea ...