Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » AirTel

Airtel’s Profit Drops By About 27%

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:30:38 +0000

Bharti Airtel Ltd. in India saw close to a 27% drop in second quarter net profit. The drop happened because of higher interest costs and competition intensity. Bharti reported a net profit of 16.61 billion rupees ($375 million) for the quarter between July and September. One year ago during the same quarter, profit was 22.63 billion rupees. Although profit dropped, Bharti saw revenues increase by about 47%. Bharti’s revenue was 152.15 billion this quarter compared to 103.79 billion rupees a year ago. [WSJ]

Vodafone Hits 100 Million Users In India

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:58:45 +0000

Vodafone subsidiary in India, Vodafone Essar Ltd. has hit 100 million subscribers. Vodafone is the third telecommunications company in India to hit this milestone. The first two are Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Reliance Communications Ltd. Vodafone also submitted bids to participate in an auction for 3G mobile services this past Friday. [WSJ]

India Will Most Likely Have About 1 Billion Mobile Phone Users By 2015

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:40:28 +0000

India currently has a population of 1.14 billion people. One of the fast growing mobile market segments in the subcontinent are the rural areas. As a matter of fact Manoj Kohli of Bharti Airtel is predicting that there will be about a billion mobile phone users in India by 2015. His company alone plans to have about 200 million customers in the next few years.

“Achieving a billion plus (Indian mobile users) by 2015 is possible,” stated Kohli at the Mobile Asia Congress event. “The largest growth will happen in the rural market.” Currently there are about 400 million mobile phone users in India and about 600 million in China.

Google’s Mobile Revolution Starts in India?

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:52:18 +0000

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has been making moves to place videos upload on YouTube available via mobile devices through a deal with Verizon. This made us wonder what else Google may be planning in their mobile division. This past Friday (Dec 1, 2006) Google and AirTel announced a strategic partnership. Airtel is the leading GSM cellphone service provider in India with over 28 million mobile customers. What makes this interesting is that Orkut, the same social network which failed to take hold in the United States, has been gaining traction in India rapidly.

After acquiring MySpace for $580 million, Rupert Murdoch stated in Wired Magazine (July â€˜06) that Google could have bought it for half the price. After Googl passed on MySpace and built their own social network called Orkut. It was largely considered a failure in the United States, instead Orkut grew in Brazil and India, and recently itâ€™s growing even further in South East Asia.

Recently Facebook has released a toolbar allowing users to search the vast user database, a MySpace toolbar with similar search capability is being developed through a Google and FOX Interactive collaboration. It does not seem that far off to think that Google may provide the same search service for Orkut. They already have the large Indian cellphone market. And itâ€™s a market thatâ€™s growing.

â€œIn India, mobile-phone ownership outweighs PC ownership by a ratio of two to one. And there are five million more mobile-phone users coming online every month,” stated Deep Nishar, Director of Google wireless products stated in the Times Online. “By the end of this year there will be more mobile phones in India than in America.”

Through their deal with AirTel, Google is becoming posed to take the population by storm starting with the youth through the use of Orkut. What better way to get kids to use their search service then to get them addicted to a social network and then make it accessible to them anywhere?

With the recent restructuring of many Google services to be more accessible on mobile devices, it is easy to tell a considerable amount of effort by the search giant is being put into getting services in your hand wherever you are. Most of us knew that Google is trying to set off a mobile movement, but Iâ€™m not sure how many of us saw this revolution sweeping in from South East Asia.

Contributors:
Amit Chowdhry
Mo Kakwan