Airtel

Leadership
How to motivate employees? "Creating a corporate culture of cooperation and respect
for the individulal is essential for a company to stay strong, flexible and young.",
Mr. Akira Takahashi, Fmr Chairman, Denso Corporation
Process Improvement Japan is undertaking the challenge to dissect the way Toyota Motor
Corporation and its supplier companies have successfully implemented employee
engagement strategies.
Employee engagement literally means that all employees participate in activities to achieve
the company`s goals. But it may not be as easy as it sounds. When a company loses its
flexibility and vision, each department may stop considering the company`s interests as a
whole. They may think that even if their company loses its competitiveness, it`s all right as
long as their own department is fine. This narrow-mindedness or sectionalism can emerge in
any organization. Or, employees can lose morale and commit for other reasons such as a
lack of empowering leadership, a lack of team spirit, etc.

Airtel
Leadership

For the last several years, Bharti Airtel Ltd. has constantly maintained its position as the
undisputed king of the country's telecom sector.
The company boasts of a subscriber base of 183.61 million at the end of November
2012 and commands a market-share of 20.62 percent at the end of October 2012. In
the fast quarterly results (July-September 2012), the average revenue per user (ARPU)
for Bharti was INR 177 (US$3.23). The companys net profit declined for the 11th quarter
in a row, falling by 29.7 percent to INR 721.2 crore ($131.7) in July-September, as
compared to the same period in the previous year. (See IndiaWatch: TTSL Opts Out Of
GSM Auction.)
The company, like the Indian telecommunications industry, is facing various challenges
and its future will largely depend on how it manages these challenges. The first
challenge is, of course, the upcoming spectrum refarming of 900 MHz. (See Five
Measures That Could Serve Airtel Better.)
The government plans to refarm the spectrum. If this happens, Airtel will need to give
up the 900-MHz spectrum or repurchase it from the market. Predictably, this will be a
big setback for Airtel.
Next, Airtel will be gearing up for the number of penalties it has to pay. It needs to make
an additional payment for spectrum usage as its licenses comes to an end in 2014.
Currently, the government is defining the criteria on the basis of which operators will be
charged for the spectrum.
The company is on the right track by focusing on customer experience. With the data
focus, telcos have to focus on customer experience. Airtel recently inaugurated a
Network Experience Center (NEC) which merges network monitoring and customer
experience management. The center boasts of a huge 3,600-square-feet video-wall that
monitors and analyzes the companys network operations and presents them in a unified
video view.

Airtel
Leadership

Off late, Airtel has been focusing on its enterprise customers to increase the revenue. Its
business division will focus on delivering efficient cloud-based solutions, data-center
services, managed-video offerings and a whole lot of other suite of services. It recently
started another data-center in Mumbai, India. (See Airtel Outlines Its Enterprise
Strategy and Airtel Launches Brand for Enterprise.)