Telecom sector’s future growth: Cosmos Strategy

In the survey which has been conducted by the Cosmos Strategy – one of the country’s leading Strategic Consulting firms which is merely based out of Mumbai has revealed in a statement that the next leg of Nation’s growth potential to come from the Telecom and Retail Sector.

The study reveals that the Telecom sector and Retail Sector in the country would going to witness a drastic growth in the upcoming years and it would expect to grow by more than 10 % from the current de-growth of 10% by year 2025.

This would be one of the largest sectorial revolutions the country would witness in the near future. Current under-penetration of micro-financing, lack of exciting options for micro-investments and extreme fragmentation of retail sector are all opportunities waiting to be innovated upon to create significant valuation through new services by the operators.

“We must remember that for 80% Indian consumers, the smartphone is the only device through which they explore internet. This provides operators the ability to mine fabulous customer insights. Traditionally, operators had developed extremely sophisticated algorithms to measure and trigger growth of voice and data services to improve their revenues.

But today, unlimited calls and fat data quotas have made such an activity redundant. So instead of ruing this, it will be useful to set up a very different customer insight program. The first possibility as the largest provider of internet services is to set up an AI-based customer insight engine. Privacy issues are being widely discussed but appropriate precautions can be put in place to ensure customer protection.

Such a database alone has incredible potential – companies like Google and Facebook earn billions through such insight monetization”

Mr. Mukherjee further explained, “The second area is a large customer base who is spending more and more through digital purchases from their smartphones. If you see some of the most exciting start-ups who have attracted huge valuation – say PayTm or Flipkart and witness their key product – mobile recharges and smartphones constitute almost half their revenue portfolio.

One can never ignore the hunger, dexterity and single-minded focus of PayTm or Flipkart – but here is how the operator could have done it better. If the large operators had set-up a dedicated digital recharge platform and not allowed any outside service to sell their product they would now have a company valued several billion dollars.

While today’s reality is purchase through the phone, tomorrow the same services will work on voice-activated platform like the Alexa’s of the world. It will be interesting to see if operators are keen to create such futuristic products on their own and not let the value creation to be externalized.

Similarly, operators are well placed to upgrade customer smartphones through contextual insights-based offers (camera quality for selfie user, battery life for video user or large memory for heavy app users). They can even sweeten the deal by bundling their own voice and data services along with the phone.”

“The success of Hike, Wink or Jio TV has proven that operators are already activating themselves in the OTT area. But mobile operators all over the world have launched similar products. The real scope and potential could be significantly higher – in today’s connected IoT enabled world. The real question is finding the correct structure which captures the hunger & agility of a start-up with the might and ability of an operator.