Airtel beats Jio in race for postpaid users in Q1

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Airtel is leading in the race with Reliance Jio to capture a larger postpaid subscriber base as Indian telcos seek ways to improve revenue and average revenue per user (ARPU) in the absence of headline tariff hikes, analysts said. This is mainly due to Airtel's premiumisation strategy backed by aggressive on-ground retail strategy, they added, an area where Jio — which launched its new postpaid plans in March — appears to be lacking currently. «Postpaid is a push product and requires telcos to consistently engage with (retail) customers to convince them to upgrade from prepaid.

Physical touchpoints like retail stores, and aggressive call centre initiatives are required to convert customers to postpaid,» said Kunal Vora, head, India equity research, BNP Paribas India. Airtel added 0.8 million postpaid users in the June quarter. While Jio does not disclose its postpaid subscriber base, it has said that a bulk of new Jio Fiber (Jio fibre-to-the-home business) users were on postpaid plans.

As per the sector regulator's May end data, Jio added 0.59 million wired broadband users over April and May to take its total use base to around 9 million. Analysts estimate Airtel's higher paying postpaid base increased to 6% of its overall India mobile subscriber base in the fiscal first quarter from 5% a year back, but Jio has been under 2% of its total user base consistently. Overall, though, Airtel added 3.1 million customers in the April-June period compared with Jio's 9.2 million, including Jio Fibre users.