Interview Questions for Bharti

Airtel:
During the interview, we would like to cover the following areas of marketing
provided below. Although not all questions will be covered in all interviews, we
would like to cover all these areas across the various interviews.

I. Branding and brand positioning

• How has Bharti ensure consistent touch and feel?
• What were the challenges you faced in keeping the Airtel brand consistent
across various regions and targets markets?
• What have been Bharti’s key brand values in keeping the Airtel brand
consistent?

II. New product development

• Is Bharti looking at a lower cost handset to compete with the “people’s
phone” proposed by Spice?

III. Distribution and channels

• How does the chain of distribution work? I.e. for a farmer to buy an Airtel
prepaid phone, who are all the parties involved (ex. The motorcycle guy with
cards in various denominations), how do they stay in contact with one
another?
• How does Airtel keep track of inventory of these cards?
• How do these parties get paid?
• What is the rate of “default”? i.e. loss of pre-paid cards that are not
accounted for.
• What other methods of distribution for taking Airtel products to the market?
• What method of distribution has been the most successful in rural markets?

IV. Promotions and advertising

• How does Bharti implement regional marketing promotions organizationally?
• What decisions regarding promotions are centralized and which are
decentralized?
• Which promotions and means of advertising have worked best in the rural
markets?
• What are some of the promotional strategies that Bharti has considered for
the BOP consumers but not implement either at this time or have rejected for
any reason?

V. Rural marketing approaches

• Under documentation, the website says that Bharti will require a photo
identification—how is this addressed with people from the villages?
• In one of the articles, it states that the next phase of growth will come from
villages. When it comes to distribution, Bharti follows “matchbox” strategy
—“we should be present whenever a matchbox is present”—what is the
matchbox strategy?
• What are the necessary needs of the consumers at the bottom of the pyramid
from a mobile phone perspective that you have yet not been able to address
through the various marketing strategies?
• What were the most important needs that such consumers identified in
having a mobile phone? Ex. Status symbol? What else?
• Have you found that in addressing the needs of the consumers at the BOP,
you have tapped into an “unrealized” need for the city dwellers as well?
Example?
• Considering Bharti’s competitors are tapping into the rural market as well,
how does Bharti ensure customer loyalty?
• How does Bharti intend to overcome the infrastructure hurdle in order to tap
into the rural markets?
• In a recent article, it was indicated that in order to minimize the cost of
building infrastructure in rural areas, Bharti was partnering with Idea Cellular
and Vodafone to “share” their current towers. Has the partnership been
implemented? How has this partnership worked so far?

VI. Partnerships (banks, Nokia, etc.)

• What can you tell us about innovative partnerships that Bharti has done? For
example, can you tell us about the Bharti’s partnership with Nokia in the use
of mobile vans in villages?
• What can you tell us about Bharti’s partnership with ICICI Bank for purposes
of using the mobile phone to transfer money?
• What other partnerships has Bharti engaged in and how has that helped
Bharti develop new products and utilize new distribution channels or
promotions?
VII. Pricing and bundling/packages (prepaid packages,
free incoming etc.)
• What are the pricing strategies that Bharti has used to reach the consumers
at BOP?
• In light of competition in the market and lower revenue per user due to lower
pricing, how has that affected Bharti’s over all pricing strategy?

VIII. Key take-aways and learnings about emerging

markets (big picture summary of the above)
• As an organization, what have you learned about emerging markets through
the various initiative

IX. Information request (can they share

documents/presentations about any of above
• Can we have a copy of last year’s annual report?
• Do you have any related documentation or presentation that may assist us in
our research?