Airtel stakes claim to segment leadership

Vodafone Idea’s postpaid plans will bundle in more data and services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, as it aims to get a larger share of postpaid customers. The competition for postpaid customers is heating up with Bharti Airtel aiming to take the lead in this higher paying consumer segment.

The No 3 carrier’s four Vi Max plans that range from ₹401, ₹501, ₹701 and go up to ₹1,101, will replace its older plans that started from ₹399.

“By strengthening our Postpaid portfolio with Vi Max, we aim to attract the high ARPU postpaid users to the 5G ready Vi network offering them more power, value and convenience,” said Avneesh Khosla, chief marketing officer at Vodafone Idea.

Earlier the ₹399 plan gave 40GB and 100 SMS per month, now ₹401 will give 50GB, data rollover of 200 GB and unlimited night usage, besides Sony Liv Mobile for a year.

While all plans have unlimited local and STD calls, 3000 SMS, access to Hungama music app and Vi games and movies apps, the higher paid plans unlimited data usage through the month, access to Amazon Prime for six months and Disney Hotstar subscription for a year.

“The large bouquet of differentiated digital offerings, curated as a result of deep-integrated partnerships with domain experts, will now be available to all Vi Max postpaid users helping them thrive in the digital era,” Khosla said.

It has also upgraded its family plans to offer four connections at ₹999 and 5 connections at ₹1,149 with Amazon Prime and Disney Hotstar bundled into them.

Mint had first reported in June about Vodafone Idea’s plans to deepen focus on postpaid subscribers through improved plans.

Vi Max plans will offer discounts on flight and hotel bookings through MakeMyTrip. Other travel benefits such as seven-day international roaming pack worth ₹2,999 per year and complimentary access to domestic and international airport lounges will continue to be available on the new REDX 1101 Plan.

Users can also set their own credit limit via Vi app, which will enable them to have far higher control over their monthly spends and all Vi Max postpaid plan users will enjoy priority service at the carrier’s stores, call pick up within 20 seconds at customer care and depending upon plan type have direct access to customer care executives.

Airtel chief executive officer Gopal Vittal said on Tuesday that the no 2 carrier was well poised to take the lead in the postpaid segment by taking a short-term advantage of the financial struggles faced by Vodafone Idea.

“We believe that there is a serious short-term opportunity to grow share and disproportionately win quality customers leveraging the power of 5G. Given the financially pressed situation that one of the players in the industry is going through, we feel that the moment is ripe for Airtel pulling ahead and being the decisively most aspirational brand in India. With this, we hope to take a further lead, particularly in the postpaid segment,” he said, without naming the No. 3 carrier Vodafone Idea.

Airtel added over 300,000 postpaid users in the quarter ended 30 September, taking the total number to 31.5 million, which it said was the largest base of postpaid customers in the market.