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  • Airtel Q3 FY22: 5.4% revenue growth QoQ led by ARPU increase

    Airtel Q3 FY22: 5.4% revenue growth QoQ led by ARPU increase

    Mumbai: Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Wednesday announced its third quarter FY 2022 results. The company has posted quarterly revenues of Rs 29,867 crore, up 18.3 per cent year-on-year backed by strong and consistent performance delivery across the portfolio. It reported net income (after exceptional items) of Rs 830 crore.

    The telecom company’s India business saw quarterly revenues of Rs 20,913 crore which was up by 17.9 per cent YoY. Its India customer base stands at ~356 million.

    Its mobile services revenues were up by 19.1 per cent YoY led by an increase in average revenue per user (ARPU). Its mobile ARPUs increased to Rs 163 during the quarter versus Rs 146 in the same quarter previous year. Mobile data consumption increased by 33.8 per cent YoY at a rate of 18.3 Gb per month.

    Additionally, Airtel’s 4G customers increased by three million on a quarter-on-quarter basis to reach 195.5 million and account for 61 per cent of its total base.

    The company’s home business saw 40.4 per cent YoY growth led by strong customer additions. Home business witnessed 341,000 customer net additions in the quarter to reach a total base of 4.16 million. Its Digital TV customer base stood at 18.1 million during the same period. “Digital TV continues to improve its market position with steady revenue and customer base,” said the statement.

    Airtel Business revenues were up by 13.4 per cent YoY backed by strong demand for data portfolio and emerging businesses.

    During the quarter, Google announced that it would invest $1 billion in Airtel as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund. Airtel also announced a joint venture with Hughes Communications to become the largest satellite service operator in India.  

    “We have delivered another quarter of sustained performance across all our business segments,” said Bharti Airtel India and South Asia MD and CEO Gopal Vittal. “Overall sequential revenue growth was at 5.4 per cent and EBITDA margins came in at 49.9 per cent. The recent tariff revision for mobile services has gone down well and we are exiting the quarter with an industry leading ARPU of Rs 163. The full impact of the revised mobile tariffs, however, will be visible in the fourth quarter. Our Enterprise, Homes and Africa business continue to deliver strongly, with steady increase in contribution to the overall mix of the portfolio. Our balance sheet is robust and we are now generating healthy free cash flows. This has enabled us to recently prepay some of our spectrum liabilities to the Government thereby reducing the interest burden.”

    He further stated, “Google’s recent investment is a strong validation of Airtel’s role in being a leading pioneer of India’s digital revolution. Our emerging digital services portfolio across Airtel IQ, AdTech, digital marketplace, Nxtra and digital banking positions us well to build an Airtel of the future.”

  • Google to invest $1 billion in Airtel

    Google to invest $1 billion in Airtel

    Mumbai: Bharti Airtel and Google on Friday announced that the latter intends to invest $ one billion in the telecom major as part of its Google for India Digitisation Fund which includes equity investment as well as a corpus.

    The investment will be for potential commercial agreements to be identified and agreed on mutually agreeable terms over the next five years. This will comprise a $700 million investment in Bharti Airtel at a price per share of Rs 734. Up to $300 million of that will go towards implementing commercial agreements which will include scaling Airtel’s offerings. Google will acquire a 1.2 per cent shareholding of Bharti Airtel including partly paid shares.

    The deal will be subject to regulatory approvals.

    “Airtel and Google share the vision to grow India’s digital dividend through innovative products,” said Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal. “With our future-ready network, digital platforms, last-mile distribution and payments ecosystem, we look forward to working closely with Google to increase the depth and breadth of India’s digital ecosystem.”

    Airtel and Google will work together to explore opportunities to bring down barriers of owning a smartphone in partnership with various device manufacturers, potentially co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards and focus on growing and shaping the cloud ecosystem in India.

    “Airtel is a leading pioneer shaping India’s digital future, and we are proud to partner on a shared vision for expanding connectivity and ensuring equitable access to the Internet for more Indians,” said Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “Our commercial and equity investment in Airtel is a continuation of our Google for India Digitization Fund’s efforts to increase access to smartphones, enhance connectivity to support new business models, and help companies on their digital transformation journey.”

  • AMG, Google ink multi-year and multi-platform partnership

    AMG, Google ink multi-year and multi-platform partnership

    Mumbai: Allen Media Group (AMG) and Google have announced a new multi-year and multi-platform strategic partnership to accelerate growth across AMG’s entire portfolio of media and digital properties, providing data-driven and secure technology solutions in service of AMG’s current phase of rapid expansion.

    Google Cloud will provide its secure and scalable cloud infrastructure to power AMG’s digital evolution, deepening its connection and relationships with its audiences worldwide. “Using Google Cloud will also enable AMG to build apps faster, make smarter business decisions, and connect to its audiences anywhere, while also enabling access to business insights using Google Cloud’s data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning capabilities,” said the statement.

    “All of our Allen Media Group properties are growing at an unprecedented rate, and our partnership with Google is a key step in our continued global transformation,” stated AMG founder, chairman and CEO Byron Allen. “By leveraging Google’s technology, distribution, marketing, ad sales platforms, enormous capital support, and expertise, Allen Media Group will seamlessly build and enhance our reach and revenue worldwide.”

    AMG will also expand its YouTube TV carriage in 2022, initially with The Weather Channel and select Allen Media Group Networks, with additional nets launching later.

    Additionally, Allen Media Digital and Google will continue to work together to bring AMG’s streaming offerings to more consumers on the devices of their choice via Google Play to Android phones and tablets, as well as Google TV and other Android TV OS devices.

    “Allen Media Group’s vast portfolio of properties represents a tremendous opportunity to engage audiences worldwide,” said Google president of global partnerships Don Harrison. “We’re thrilled to partner with Allen Media Group to offer Google’s secure technology solutions, data analytics and distribution platforms as it continues to transform its business digitally and connect with more viewers globally.”

  • GUEST COLUMN: SEO trends that can be game-changers for the business

    GUEST COLUMN: SEO trends that can be game-changers for the business

    Mumbai: Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the practice of improving your site’s data to increase its traction when people are looking for products or services that are related to your business in search engines such as Google, Firefox, Bing. Yahoo, etc. This is facilitated by the result pages that pop up when a person types a particular keyword in relation to their search. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.

    How does it work?

    Major search engines such as Google and Yahoo use virtual bots to crawl through different web pages, collecting and analysing data that is then refined into an index. This index acts as a bank of information that possesses data collated from web pages. The algorithms within this index then categorise the collected data by filtering the information that is requested by the user. The final results page is a result of hundreds of ranking factors or signals, determining the order of the pages that should appear in the search results for a given query. This intensive process is carried out in helping the user find an exact match to their keyword search. The success of your SEO depends on how user/keyword-friendly your website data is.

    How important it is from a marketing perspective

    SEO plays a critical role within digital marketing because people search for a trillion things in a day, often with a commercial interest in a certain product/service. ‘Search’ is a primary way of generating digital traffic towards your website, making it an essential part of your digital marketing strategy. Greater visibility and higher search rankings than your potential competitor can have a material impact on your ultimate goal. To summarise, SEO lays the foundation of a holistic marketing ecosystem.

    Changing Trends

    Since the internet culture is so dynamic, its tools and practices are constantly evolving. SEO is no exception as the concept is subject to so many technological advancements on a daily basis. The algorithms change frequently, keeping the businesses and digital marketers on their toes. This is why being aware of what’s coming down the pipeline is extremely important. It can help a business plan prevent possible penalties or a massive drop in its site’s ranking.

    Mobile SEO: With an uncontrollable smartphone penetration, more and more people are getting their hands on a smarter cellular device. The one that allows them to do more than just calling, texting people. Billions of people conduct searches via their phones, making it a key target area for digital marketers. It has now proven to become one of the more influential SEO areas than a desktop. If you’re doing SEO for desktops and not for mobile, it might have a better impact on your desktop rankings however, your mobile rankings could be abysmal. Moving forward, marketers will have to focus on both desktop and mobile SEO to maintain their positions in the search pages.

    Voice Search: With virtual assistants such as Siri and Alexa getting smarter by the day, voice-search interaction is definitely going to be the next big thing within the SEO market. It is going to revolutionise the way you interact with search engines. Virtual assistants and AI are on their way to making the search process more user-efficient by providing answers to questions prior to users asking them. This path-breaking technology is expected to transpose the SEO landscape for many businesses.

    Intentional Content: This SEO trend/technique is evergreen. It creates the basis of your search results ranking. Unless you have content that is meaningful and relevant to the consumer, no level of optimisation could help you attract traffic to your website. A digital marketer needs to curate best-in-class intent content by keeping the user in mind. This can only be achieved after a comprehensive study of current keyword trends, followed by rigorous competitor analysis.

    Video Content: YouTube has been increasingly impacting the SEO rankings of many businesses. This makes one realise the importance of effective video content within a digital marketing strategy. Analysts and marketers highly suggest that these videos should promote the target keywords and be optimized for search. Embedding a video on your landing page that targets the same keyword could also prove beneficial in this regard.

    (Anoushka Adya is founder of Di-mention Studios, a digital marketing agency. The views expressed in the column are personal and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.)

  • Disney+Hotstar appoints Shalini Poddar as EVP & head of ad sales

    Disney+Hotstar appoints Shalini Poddar as EVP & head of ad sales

    Mumbai: Disney+ Hotstar has appointed Shalini Poddar as executive vice president and head of ad sales. Poddar replaced Gulshan Verma who had quit the streaming service in July to join Jio Ads as chief executive officer.

    At Disney+Hotstar, Poddar will lead ad sales revenue and strategy for the service in India and lead a team of 140 across all aspects of the ads business from business planning, sales, sales strategy including pricing and format, revenue management, operations, data partnerships, programmatic, brand lab, measurement/RoI and customer marketing.

    She was previously associated with Google as head of business development, Google Play Apps, India, Southeast Asia and Australia. She had joined Google in March 2016 as industry manager for telecom, gaming and payments. In a career spanning 17 years, she has had stints at Accenture Management Consulting and Kotak Mahindra Bank.

    She completed her graduation from Delhi University and is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

  • JioPhone Next smartphone to hit shelves this Diwali

    JioPhone Next smartphone to hit shelves this Diwali

    Mumbai: Jio and Google have announced that the JioPhone Next smartphone will be available in stores from Diwali. The JioPhone Next will be the most affordable smartphone in the world with an entry price of Rs 1,999.

    The smartphone will be made available across the country at Reliance Retail’s extensive network of JioMart Digital retail locations. The network of 30,000 retail partners will provide the JioPhone Next with a paperless digital financing option.

    “I am delighted that Google and Jio teams have succeeded in bringing this breakthrough device to Indian consumers in time for the festival season, in spite of the current global supply chain challenges caused by the Covid pandemic,” said Reliance Industries chairman and managing director Mukesh D Ambani. “I have always been a firm believer in the power of the digital revolution to enrich, enable and empower the lives of 1.35 billion Indians. We have done it in the past with connectivity. Now we are enabling it again with a smartphone device.”

    He added, “I heartily congratulate Sundar Pichai and his team at Google, and everyone in Jio who partnered for offering this wonderful Diwali Gift to our countrymen.”

    The JioPhone Next runs on Pragati OS, an optimised version of Android developed by Google and Jio to address the unique needs of millions of smartphone users across the country. It is powered by a Qualcomm processor and has embedded voice-first features that will enable Indians to consume content and navigate the phone in their language of choice. The smartphone will have access to millions of apps via the Google Play Store.

    “The JioPhone Next is an affordable smartphone designed for India, inspired by the belief that everyone in India should benefit from the opportunities the internet creates,” said Alphabet Inc and Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai. “To build it, our teams had to work together to solve complex engineering and design challenges, and I am excited to see how millions of people will use these devices to better their lives and communities.”

  • GUEST COLUMN: How Artificial Intelligence is transforming the world of digital marketing

    GUEST COLUMN: How Artificial Intelligence is transforming the world of digital marketing

    Mumbai: From Siri to Tesla Car, and Google AI to Alexa, Artificial Intelligence is now impacting every aspect of our lives. It is designed and programmed in a way to mimic and think like a human being. With data as the new oil in the marketing world, intelligence will be needed to derive meaningful insights to improve the marketing mix.

    With the vast potential of collecting, analysing, applying, and learning data, artificial intelligence is transforming the digital strategies of various sectors. With its advancement, it is also impacting and dominating the world of digital marketing.

    We all know digital marketing uses online platforms to advertise products and services of the brand. A study conducted by Salesforce revealed that almost 51 per cent of marketers are already using AI, as of 2018. But, after the pandemic, customers, as well as businesses, took the digital way resulting in an unprecedented surge in the way people experience the digital ecosystem, where our lives had literally moved online.

    Here are some insights on how AI is playing a pivotal role in the field of digital marketing:

    Customer Insights Integration

    Customer insight integration basically refers to the analysis of customer behaviour. Insights in this perspective refer to the metrics that show, how well a certain content is performing. For example: On LinkedIn, when one uploads an image/video, AI immediately scans the image for nudity/sensitive content and rejects or removes it from the timeline. Alternatively, if your status has more comments on a particular post, the algorithm amplifies it to the second and third network of users. On another popular digital platform, Spotify, the app recommends playlists based on the user’s choices. A similar algorithm is deployed by Amazon when you see recommended products based on your past purchase. Most popular digital platforms, through AI, are able to paint a virtual personality of the user, based on past behaviour and actions online.

    Real-Time Tracking

    Artificial intelligence also allows real-time tracking and lets the marketers know how a certain post is performing in an instant. For marketers, this means faster A/B testing of content, better analysis, and swift deployment of better strategies to produce more content of what’s working.

    Enhances Customer Experience

    Artificial Intelligence uses the theory of machine learning to study its user. They observe the pattern of the user’s choices by monitoring what s/he likes or dislikes. After observing the patterns, they show content to users according to their preferences and likes. This makes marketing virtually personalised and the user engages more with the content as per his/her preference, stimulating dopamine. And it’s not rocket science to note that a happy user is most likely to buy a product or service.

    Chatbot

    Chatbots are designed in such a way that it can stimulate human conversation with the help of pre-defined texts and sentences. With the introduction of AI in digital marketing, it has enhanced the customer experience by providing them 24×7 customer care services. A study conducted on American Businesses and Customers who have used chatbots revealed that 64 per cent of Americans agreed on the availability of chatbots 24×7, on any day as its best feature 24×7. An erstwhile long content that had a dedicated FAQ page has now turned into an interactive session where the bot addresses your most common concerns and directs you to a human when needed.

    Email marketing

    AI can also help email marketers reach the right customers at the right time, ensuring that messaging is relevant, engaging, and more likely to convert. It can also allow you to better analyse what types of messaging, subject lines, design, and images get the best results. With Artificial Intelligence, it has become a lot easier to send the customer personalised emails. 

    With data-driven marketing strategies ruling the roost, Artificial Intelligence is the hero that ‘makes sense of the data, analyses the data, creating a virtual persona of the intended audiences, and predicts ‘better’ strategies to target them. And this is probably just the start of how AI will transform the face of marketing as we know it.

    (Nikhil Sharda is EVP – creative & digital communications at Scroll Mantra. The views expressed in the column are personal and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.)

  • JioPhone Next rollout to commence before Diwali

    JioPhone Next rollout to commence before Diwali

    Mumbai: The launch of the much-awaited affordable smartphone, JioPhone Next being jointly designed by Jio and Google is in advanced trials and will commence before Diwali, the company announced on Friday.

    Jio said they have made considerable progress towards launching the made-for-India smartphone. The first-of-its-kind device features an optimised operating system based on Android and Play Store.

    “Both companies have begun testing JioPhone Next with a limited set of users for further refinement and are actively working to make it available more widely in time for the Diwali festive season. This additional time will also help mitigate the current industry-wide, global semiconductor shortages,” it said.

    The device and the operating system aims to offer “premium capabilities” that have until now been associated with more powerful smartphones, including voice-first features that enable people to consume content and navigate the phone in their own language, deliver a great camera experience and get the latest Android feature and security updates said the company.

    According to the company, the phone is also built with exciting features like the Google Assistant, automatic read-aloud and language translation for any on-screen text, a smart camera with India-centric filters and much more. “The companies remain committed to their vision of opening up new possibilities for millions of Indians, especially those who will experience the internet for the very first time,” it said in a media statement.

  • Nykaa onboards Shilpa Jain as AVP, consumer & market insights

    Nykaa onboards Shilpa Jain as AVP, consumer & market insights

    Mumbai: Omnichannel beauty retailer Nykaa has brought on board Shilpa Jain as associate vice president (AVP), consumer & market insights.

    In her new role, Jain will be responsible for driving consumer & market insights, providing relevant insight-based solutions to address specific branding and marketing issues for the brand.
    Jain comes with over 13 years of experience in the consumer insights industry. She has previously worked with Google as the consumer & marketing specialist for around two years. Her past stints also include companies like Coca-Cola and UK-based Kantar.

    Jain is an MBA graduate from MICA Ahmedabad and has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce.

  • Google, Jio unveil affordable smartphone JioPhone Next

    KOLKATA: Reliance Industries Limited (RIL)’s telecom arm Jio democratised internet usage in India in 2016 with the launch of affordable 4G connections. The company did not limit itself to just telecom after its humongous success but transformed itself into a technology platform. Over the last year, it also struck several partnerships with global tech giants including Google.

    At the 44th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of RIL on Thursday, chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani made yet another major announcement about taking the partnership one step further. The two companies have now collaborated to develop India’s ‘most affordable smartphone’ JioPhone Next.

    The fully-featured smartphone will be available from 10 September. However, the company has not revealed the price yet.

    JioPhone Next will have features like a voice assistant, automatic read-aloud of screen text, language translation, smart camera with augmented reality filters. It seems quite clear that the company is not only looking at affordability but the user-friendly aspect for mass consumers. And language translation features may lead to another revolution in regionalisation of the digital economy in India.

    In addition to that, Ambani has announced a new 5G partnership between Google Cloud and Jio. The latter will use Google Cloud’s cutting-edge technologies to power Jio’s 5G Solutions and for powering the internal needs of key Reliance growth businesses like Reliance Retail, JioMart, JioSaavn, and JioHealth.

    “We are confident of being the first to launch full-fledged 5G services. And, because of our converged, future-proof architecture, Jio’s network is uniquely positioned to quickly and seamlessly upgrade from 4G to 5G,” said Ambani, “To develop the end-to-end 5G ecosystem we are now working with leading global partners to develop a full range of 5G-capable devices. The Jio 5G technology is also well-positioned to create compelling applications for consumers and enterprises spanning Healthcare, Education, Entertainment, Retail and other key verticals of the economy.”