Tata Teleservices

Tata Teleservices Limited
Public
Traded as BSE: 532371
Industry Telecommunications
Founded 1996
Founder Ratan Tata
Headquarters Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Key people
 Ratan Tata
(Interim Chairman)[1]
Srinath Narasimhan
(MD & CEO)
Products Fixed-line and mobile telephony, broadband and fixed-line internet services, digital television and network services
Revenue ₹3,191 crore (US$440 million) (2017)[2]
Members 6.61 crore[3] (2014)
Parent Tata Sons
Subsidiaries
Viom Networks (26%)
Website www.tatateleservices.com

Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) is an Indian broadband and telecommunications service provider based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is a subsidiary of the Tata Group, an Indian conglomerate. It operates under the brand name Tata DoCoMo in various telecom circles of India.Tata Teleservices have sought to exit mobile telecom due to heavy losses and debt and sell its unit to Airtel in a debtfree and cash-free deal and described as virtually free and Airtel will only pay a part of Tata Teleservices's unpaid spectrum payment liability.[4][5][6]

History

In November 2008, Japanese telecom giant NTT Docomo picked up a 26 per cent equity stake in Tata Indicom, a subsidiary of Tata Teleservices, for about ₹130.7 billion (US$1.8 billion) or an enterprise value of ₹502.69 billion (US$7.0 billion).[7] NTT DOCOMO announced on 25 April 2014 that they are going to sell 100% of their shares in Tata Indicom to Tata Teleservices and exit Indian Telecom. The reason for exit is because of huge loss of $1.3 billion.[8]

In February 2008, TTSL announced that it would provide CDMA mobile services targeted towards the youth, in association with the Virgin Group on a franchisee model basis. By April 1, 2015, all Virgin Mobile CDMA & GSM customers have been migrated into the umbrella Tata Indicom brand (Tata Indicom for Mumbai NCR).

Currently Tata Teleservices provides mobile services under the following brand names:

On 9 October 2017 Tata Teleservices announced it is preparing an exit plan for most of its 5,000-odd employees, which includes a notice of three to six months, severance packages for those willing to leave earlier, a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) for elders, while transferring only a small part of its employees to other group companies.[9]

NTT DoCoMo exit

NTT DoCoMo announced on 25 April 2014 that they are going to sell 100% of their shares in Tata Indicom to Tata Teleservices and exit Indian Telecom. The reason for exit is because of huge loss of $780 million during financial year ending 31 March 2014 .[10]

Sale to Bharti Airtel

On 12 October 2017, Bharti Airtel announced that it would acquire the consumer mobile businesses of Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) and Tata Teleservices Maharastra Ltd (TTML) in a debt-free cash-free deal. The deal will essentially be free for Airtel which will only incur TTSL's unpaid spectrum payment liability. TTSL will continue to operate its enterprise, fixed line and broadband businesses and its stake in tower company Viom Networks.[11][12][13] The deal received approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in mid-November 2017.[14][15] On 29 August 2018, Bharti Airtel, got its approval for the merger proposal with Tata Teleservices.[16]

Market data

Tata Indicom in April 2009, crossed the 35 million subscribers mark in the wireless category with an overall subscriber base of over 36 million.

Tata Teleservices is #2 in terms of market share in Delhi NCR region with a subscriber base of 5 million.

Business areas

Tata Teleservices offers multiple tariff plans in both the Post-paid and Pre-Paid category. It also offers Mobile value-added services (VAS) to subscribers.

Branding

Tata Teleservices launched the Virgin Mobile brand to target the youth segment.

Rural Telephony

TTSL also maintains a distribution network across villages, wherein people are appointed and trained by TTSL – who visit villages on a bicycle or a two-wheeler at defined times on defined days of the week, selling recharge vouchers and servicing equipment; each runner covers between 200 and 300 customers?

The company joined hands with Tata Chemicals, Tata Kisan Sansar (TKS) network, disseminating information through these centres and using them as local distributors.

Retail

The company's retail business has around 3,000 outlets nationally, comprising 600 TTSL owned stores and around 2,500 stores in the Franchisee format. Tata Indicom already covers the top 700 towns in India in terms of population through

Tata indicom also maintains an online portal for its customers i-choose where the customers can buy Tata Indicom CDMA post-paid connections and prepaid recharge vouchers with an upfront commitment of activation and delivery of the handset within 72 hours.

Value added services

Tata Teleservices, in October 2007 launched Tata Zone, an infotainment portal on Tata Indicom BREW-enabled mobile phones, in Hindi. This service has applications, pricing details, downloads and browsing instructions in Hindi.

The rationale behind this was simple: - 66% of all Indians speak Hindi, while less than 5% understand English.

Under its VAS bouquet, TTSL offers services such as News, Games, Faith and Prayers, Ringtones, Streaming TV, Fun Shows, Video Zone, Song Download Express, Cricket, Internet Surfing, Astrology, and Mobile.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Ratan Tata named the Interim Chairman after the Board votes out Cyrus Mistry". Tata Group. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  2. ↑ ">> Company Info >> Print Financials". Moneycontrol.com. Retrieved 2012-06-28.
  3. ↑ "Mobile subscriber base now all time high at 97 crore". dnaindia.com. Retrieved 2015-02-08.
  4. ↑ "Tatas exit mobile biz, merge loss-making unit with Airtel". Pankaj Doval and Reeba Zachariah. Times of India. 13 October 2017. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
  5. ↑ "Tata Teleservices to sell its wireless mobile business to Bharti Airtel". Arijit Barman, Romit Guha. The Economic Times. 13 October 2017. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
  6. ↑ "Bharti Airtel gets Tata Teleservices' mobile unit for nothing: All you need to know about the deal". Firstpost. 13 October 2017. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
  7. ↑ "NTT DoCoMo buys 26% in Tata Tele for $2.7 bn". Business-standard.com. Retrieved 2010-07-16.
  8. ↑ Indicom Exit
  9. ↑ Sengupta, Devina (2017-10-09). "Tata Teleservices prepares exit plan for staff". The Economic Times. Retrieved 2017-10-09.
  10. ↑ Docomo Exit
  11. ↑ "Bharti Airtel to acquire Tata's mobile business on debt-free cash-free basis". www.businesstoday.in. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
  12. ↑ "Tata and Bharti to combine consumer telecom business via @tatacompanies". tata.com. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
  13. ↑ Kurup, Rajesh (12 October 2017). "Tata Tele hangs up on mobile business; Airtel picks it up". The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
  14. ↑ "Bharti Airtel-Tata Tele Merger Deal Gets CCI Approval". News18. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
  15. ↑ "Airtel receives CCI nod for Tata Tele's consumer business buy - ET Telecom". ETTelecom.com. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
  16. ↑ "Bharti Airtel shareholders approve merger proposal with Tata Teleservices". Economic Times. 29 August 2018. Retrieved 18 September 2018.
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