Tag: Airtel

  • Airtel, ZEE5 team up to offer premium content

    Airtel, ZEE5 team up to offer premium content

    MUMBAI: Airtel has partnered with video on demand platform ZEE5 to offer premium content. This benefit can be accessed by eligible #AirtelThanks customers via Airtel TV app.

    All Airtel prepaid and postpaid customers with monthly average revenue of Rs 199 will be eligible to gain access into premium ZEE5 content which includes original series and movies.

    “With smartphone becoming the preferred screen in today's digital world, access to exclusive bundled content is a big differentiator for the #AirtelThanks program. Customers can look forward to discovering all the premium content they need right here on Airtel TV and Wynk Music and that too at no extra cost,” explained Bharti Airtel CEO – content & apps Sameer Batra.

    #AirtelThanks subscribers have also been promised red carpet customer care for service and network related issues in order to give a better consumer experience.

  • Airtel partners Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Netflix to counter Jio

    Airtel partners Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Netflix to counter Jio

    MUMBAI: Indian global telecommunications company Bharti Airtel is teaming up with Flipkart, MakeMyTrip and Netflix to provide customised offers for its consumers, in a bid to compete with Reliance Jio.

    Reliance Jio, having experienced a huge growth over time, used the same strategy to attract customers. Airtel will also attempt to expand itself into a digital platform to attract more customers.

    According to a report by The Economic Times, the offer will be harboured under the #AirtelThanks privilege membership programme. Subscribers who contribute a monthly revenue of over Rs 100 on an average can enjoy the benefits of the offer. On the principle, higher the recharge, bigger the offer value.

    Flipkart will offer cash backs in the form of coupon recharges on buying a smartphone from the ecommerce platform.

    The idea is to make sure a subscriber stays with the firm. “We studied telcos across the globe including T Mobile and Telstra for this,” said Bharti Airtel CMO Vani Venkatesh.

    Speaking to ET, Jaideep Ghosh, partner at consultancy firm KPMG explained how Reliance Jio’s services have demanded other telcos to rise a step up further. Explaining that, he said, “In the currently competitive landscape, traditional sources of plain vanilla telecom services and data services are facing intense pressure and telcos need to branch out into other services, Carriers need to get into partnerships to achieve this, which is crucial to their future growth.”

    Concluding this, Sameer Batra, CEO – content and apps, at Bharti Airtel said, “The more you are invested in the brand, the higher differentiated products and more options thrown to you”.

  • Airtel rolls out #PassTheTorch campaign

    Airtel rolls out #PassTheTorch campaign

    MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel (Airtel), India’s leading telecommunications service provider, today launched an innovative digital campaign #PassTheTorch to mark the 11th edition of the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon (ADHM).  

    Gautam Anand, Chief People Officer (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel along with Airtel employees, members from top running groups in the country and people at large lit a digital torch to launch the campaign at an event held earlier today, at the Airtel Headquarters in Gurgaon. The torch will now be passed digitally across the country over smartphones to take the initiative nationwide.

    The #PassTheTorch campaign celebrates the spirit of running and at the same time encourages people across India to make their run count wherever they may be and contribute towards the empowerment of underprivileged children in rural India.  Airtel has partnered with leading fitness mobile app, Mobiefit for the campaign.

    Mobiefit app will be branded as Airtel Mobiefit during the campaign period. Airtel will engage with over 400 top running clubs in the country to expand the reach of the campaign and clock in more kilometers on the app.

    The campaign is designed around the core philosophy of ADHM, which is to bring people together for a cause. It breaks barriers by taking take the spirit of ADHM to every corner of the country through the digital flame and providing a platform to citizens to make a positive impact on the society. As part of the campaign, runners can pass on the digital flame to the next individual or group. Corresponding to the number of kilometers accumulated by the runners, Airtel will empower underprivileged children in rural areas through digital literacy, which will include teaching them use of computers and internet.  

    To participate in the #PasstheTorch campaign:

    Download the Airtel Mobiefit app on your smartphone and register as an individual or group
    Click on the Torch (Mnemonic) Screen to go to the challenge page
    Click on the start icon
    You can now record your run. When you finish a kilometer, the torch (mnemonic) will turn green
    Once green, you can end your run and share or post your achievement across social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc and encourage/challenge others to participate. 

    Airtel had roll out a similar initiative titled ‘Make Your Run Count’ in 2016, requesting people across the country to capture screenshots of their run on running apps and upload on social media platforms. Over 10K people in rural areas benefitted from the campaign and were empowered with digital literacy as they learnt the power of internet for the first time through the initiative.

    This year marks the 11th anniversary of Airtel’s association with ADHM, which is now one of the most prestigious running events across the world. The race is expected to witness participation from over 35,000 people this year who will run in 5 categories including the Half Marathon (21.097km), Great Delhi Run (6km), Open 10K, Senior Citizens Run (4.3km) and Champions with Disability (2.4Km).

  • Bharti Airtel acquires AI start-up AuthMe

    Bharti Airtel acquires AI start-up AuthMe

    MUMBAI: Indian global telecommunications services company, Bharti Airtel, confirmed on Wednesday that it had acquired AuthMe ID Services. AuthMe is a Bengaluru based start-up company concentrating on Artificial Intelligence (AI).
    Bharti Airtel global CIO Harmeen Mehta said, “We are thrilled to bring on board a bunch of highly talented people who share our passion for building exciting digital solutions that benefit our customers”.
    The core team of the Bengaluru based start-up company will join the telecom chief as part of the ‘acquihire’ deal. The employees of AuthMe will become a part of Airtel X labs in Bengaluru. The negotiation amount has not been disclosed yet.

    Mehta looked full of promises as he said, “We are rapidly scaling up Airtel X Labs, our digital innovation factory, and these new solutions will accelerate our journey towards rolling out intuitive digital products, particularly in vernacular languages, for our 430 million plus customers.”
    With this, Airtel has also obtained the intellectual property rights for two flagship solutions Callup AI and Fintech OCR. Callup AI is a chat and voice assistant which uses AI to solve consumer queries through email, chat and phone calls. Fintech OCR is an overall Optical Character Recognition (OCR) pipeline built for financial documents. It is designed for handling KYC documents, bank/credit card/loan statements, mark sheets. It can also understand any language with standard fonts.

  • Airtel, Jio have bid for assets of Aircel

    Airtel, Jio have bid for assets of Aircel

    MUMBAI: Leading telecom players Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio both have bid to separately purchase assets of bankrupt telecom operator Aircel. According to a Mint report, lenders to Aircel are keener on a lump sum sale to a single party which could get better value of the assets.
    The telecom operator Aircel Cellular Ltd and Dishnet Wireless Ltd, together known as Aircel, owe about Rs 50,000 crore to creditors which includes Rs15,545 crore debt to financial creditors and about Rs 35,000 crore to operational creditors.
    Several factors worked as the catalyst to the telecom operator’s downfall. At a time when it was already trying to take a breath in the highly competitive sector after entry of Reliance Jio, the latter called off its plan to merge its wireless business with Aircel, citing legal and regulatory uncertainties. The move made the situation worse.
    According to the report, Airtel is the sole bidder for Aircel’s spectrum assets and Jio is the sole bidder for the telecom towers. Jio is also in the race for Aircel’s fibre assets, along with Sterlite Industries, private equity firm I Squared Capital, and distressed asset fund Aion Capital.
    Deloitte is reportedly happy with the outcome. Four weeks will be taken to know the final result while bids for the asset closed on Monday.

  • Irdeto Partners with Airtel to Secure Content on Airtel’s Digital TV Platform

    Irdeto Partners with Airtel to Secure Content on Airtel’s Digital TV Platform

    AMSTERDAM: Irdeto has partnered with Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s largest telecommunications service provider, to secure all content offered on Airtel’s Digital TV services. As part of the strategic partnership, Irdeto will deploy its security solutions to secure the linear channels offered on the set-top-box and the content offered on Airtel’s hybrid Android TV platform.

    Irdeto will implement its state-of-the-art security solutions – Irdeto Armor for Android TV, Irdeto Cloaked CA and Middleware – on Airtel’s set-top-boxes to deliver the utmost safety for all its valuable content and also provide an improved customer experience.

    “To succeed in today’s ever-evolving pay TV landscape, operators need to offer innovative and secure platforms,” said Doug Lowther, CEO, Irdeto. “Operators must also balance the needs of consumers while maintaining full control of security on their platform. As a security-savvy organization that recognizes the needs of its customers, Airtel is providing a future-proof offering that gives consumers the content they desire and the flexibility they require. This forward-looking approach gives Airtel a competitive edge by delivering secure, premium and innovative pay TV services.”

    Sunil Taldar, CEO – Airtel Digital TV, said, “Customers are at the heart of everything we do at Airtel and delivering a secure platform to them is our top priority. We are delighted to have Irdeto as our partner and bring their expertise to ensure complete security of all content on our platforms.”

    Open platforms like hybrid set-top-boxes offer customers a vast choice of content and a premium user experience. Customers can enjoy flexibility and convenience as they experience content on-demand. While these platforms offer service providers an immense opportunity to meet unique customer demand for content, securing the content is imperative to ensure data protection. Under the partnership, Irdeto will work with Airtel on a robust content protection strategy that also ensures a premium user experience for customers.

    Irdeto will provide advanced security services to Airtel to help the company manage a variety of threats while ensuring an optimal viewing experience. Designed to protect the device, data and services built on Android TV, Irdeto Armor provides Airtel with the ability to securely manage this open platform to better address consumer demand now and in the future. 

  • Vodafone Idea board approves merger of Aditya Birla Telecom

    Vodafone Idea board approves merger of Aditya Birla Telecom

    MUMBAI: The board of Vodafone Idea Ltd has approved the merger of Aditya Birla Telecom Ltd (ABTL) with itself while the latter holds an 11.15 per cent stake in telecom tower firm Indus Towers.

    This amalgamation will help Vodafone Idea to have direct shareholding in Indus Towers. The approval has pushed the company one step closer towards monetizing the company’s 11.15 per cent stake in Indus Towers to pare debt.

    “The board of directors of Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) … Has considered and approved a scheme of amalgamation of Aditya Birla Telecom Limited (ABTL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company, with the company,” Vodafone Idea said in a BSE filing.

    Now, the scheme is subject to approval of the National Company Law Tribunal, Ahmedabad, besides other approvals. However, there will be no change in the shareholding pattern of VIL after completion of the amalgamation.

    Airtel through Bharti Infratel and British telecom firm Vodafone holds around 42 per cent stake each in Indus Towers and ABTL holds 11.15 per cent.

  • Rajiv Mathrani joins Star Sports as chief marketing officer

    Rajiv Mathrani joins Star Sports as chief marketing officer

    MUMBAI: Star Sports has appointed Rajiv Mathrani as its new chief marketing officer (CMO), a source close to the development has confirmed to Indiantelevision.com. Mathrani joined Star Sports on 17 September 2018. In his last gig, he worked as chief brand and online officer at Airtel, where he led the transformation of the telecom giant into a digital services player.

    In a career spanning close to two decades, Mathrani has worked with top companies including Pepsico, GlaxoSmithKline, Citibank and Marico Industries. He was a creative consultant for a brief period of three years, before returning to the corporate world as vice president marketing at Pepsico in 2010. He was elevated to Pepsico senior director – snacks category head in 2014.

    Mathrani holds a PGDBM in marketing from XLRI Jamshedpur.

    In a recent development, Star had expressed displeasure with regards to Virat Kohli’s absence from Asia Cup. The broadcaster wrote an email to ACC game development manager Thusith Perera, stating how Kohli’s absence will impact the financial aspect of the coverage. The broadcaster wrote that it will impact their ability to monetise and generate revenue for the tournament.

    Responding to the email, BCCI, however, in a sharp reply to ACC has made it clear that neither it nor broadcasters have any say in national team selection matters.

  • Ex MullenLowe Lintas’ Joseph George ‘Tilt-ing’ the creative agency model

    Ex MullenLowe Lintas’ Joseph George ‘Tilt-ing’ the creative agency model

    MUMBAI: A 150-year experienced team from across advertising, marketing, content, consumer advocacy, data analytics, storytelling, studio production, digital, media, qualitative research, behavioural science and video analytics have come together to offer consulting, communication, content and video production services for brands and businesses under the name Tilt Brand Solutions.

    Tilt Brand Solutions chairman and MD Joseph George says, “The context in which brands operate is everything. When that changes, everything about the brand outreach needs to change. What, where and how consumers buy, and what, where and how they consume content, have all changed. These changes cannot be responded to, by shoe-horning existing models into new structures. They need to be addressed by structuring a new; not re-structuring an old. Ergo Tilt.” 

    Tilt believes that brand and communication planning today is mostly “right brained”, predicated primarily on culture, attitudes and beliefs. And while these will continue to remain critical, the plethora of actual behavioural and consumption data available today cannot be ignored.

    Joseph opines, “Data analytics today sits only in digital, media or analytics agencies. At Tilt though, composite teams of left and right-brained strategists evaluate brand and behavioural data in human and cultural contexts and vice versa. Specialists in brand management, consumer behaviour, digital and media, data analytics, video analytics and communication planning work together to provide what we at Tilt call, full brained thinking.”

    Democratisation of data and proliferation of screens of all sizes, have resulted in Indians consuming more videos than ever before; contributing 50 to 70 per cent of all IP traffic and 75 per cent of advertising spends. Tilt believes thus, that getting right the conceptualisation and production of advertising and content in the video format, has become critical.

    Explains Joe, “Tilt’s creative philosophy of One Brand, Many Stories is built on the belief, that brands have, and need to tell many stories. More the stories, the more the brand begins to breathe and belong in people’s consciousness. The assumption that one video asset will work across audiences, objectives and platforms is flawed. Content creation and production needs to be tailored to each platform and experience across all forms of video-based advertising and content – from commercials to long, short and very short format video content.”

    The leadership team, Shriram Iyer chief creative and content officer, Srikanth Sarathy chief operating officer, Rajiv Chatterjee chief business officer and soon to join Kedar Teny as chief strategy officer is confident that Tilt’s strategy-story-studio offering, driven by its twin philosophies of full-brained thinking and one brand, many stories could well serve as proof of concept for brand owners and creative enterprises who are seeking to influence, engage and entertain consumers of today.

    The agency wants to sit in the union set of consulting, communication, content and video production; drawing inputs however, from the intersection set of brand building, communication planning, storytelling, analytics, media & digital strategy, behavioral science and production management.

    Joseph further adds, “We had to look at talent with specific experience and skills; and so, our starting team couldn’t be more diverse from each other, and different from norm in terms of careers and academics – Airtel, Culture Machine, Disney, Franklin Templeton, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, IIT, Infosys, ISRO, Leo Burnett, Lintas, London School of Economics, McDonald’s, Mediacom, NID, Omnicom Media, PWC, Sony Sports, Star TV and The Viral Fever.”

  • BSNL sees speed spike in latest Netflix ISP ranking

    BSNL sees speed spike in latest Netflix ISP ranking

    MUMBAI: The streaming giant Netflix has released its monthly ISP Speed index data where India’s BSNL saw a noteworthy speed jump. The state-owned telco company’s average speed rose to 2 Mbps, up from 1.66 Mbps in July. Along with the speed spike, it also rose one spot according to the ranking. Other than BSNL, rankings of Hathway and D-Vois have also improved but the speed spike is not much notable. In overall country rankings, India fell one spot to 54th place. The Netflix ISP Speed Index is a measure of primetime Netflix performance on a particular ISP.

    According to ISP index, 7 Star Digital, Spectranet, Airtel have acquired top three positions. Another government owned entity MTNL fell one spot due to the spike in BSNL’s average speed.

    Globally, largest speed gain on the index was experienced by Flow in Jamaica. Speeds at the Jamaican operator increased by 0.74 Mbps, bringing its average monthly speed to 2.37 Mbps. Indosat-Fibre in Indonesia also saw notable spike reaching a 4.14 Mbps average for August up from 3.76 Mbps in July.

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    In the losses category, KBro in Taiwan and SK Broadband’s speed in South Korea decreased notably. KBro experienced speeds decline to a monthly average of 2.80 Mbps from 3.06 Mbps last month and SK Broadband’s speeds slowed to 2.71 Mbps on average down from 2.97 Mbps last month. As per country rankings, Jamaica dropped five spots to 51st and Singapore dropped four spots to 12th.

    The country reckoned to have the overall top speed is Switzerland at 4.19 Mbps, followed by Netherland’s 4.07 Mbps and Romania’s 4.01 Mbps. Netflix’s home country, the US, stood at eighth position with average 3.98 Mbps speed.