Dear Shareholders,
FY 2015-16 was an exciting year for us. During the year, we strengthened our go-to-market operations, launched innovative data propositions, accelerated postpaid dramatically, besides enhancing customer experience and stripping out waste. As a result, this year we have witnessed the highest ever growth in our market share. We also accelerated our smaller businesses considerably. Finally, we secured spectrum to further consolidate our 4G presence, giving us a pan-India footprint for 4G services.
87,000
sites
As a part of Project Leap, we undertook one of our largest sites deployment initiatives this year, rolling out over 87,000 sites.
On go-to-market excellence, we further strengthened our rural direct distribution and introduced innovative demand generation initiatives. We continue to push the automation of our sales force processes and emphasise on the quality of acquisition. Data continues to be an important component of our portfolio. We have expanded our 4G footprint across many more cities and towns in India and have successfully positioned our brand as ‘The Smartphone Network’. Our brand is now in a very strong position. We have expanded our content portfolio with the launch of Wynk Movies and Wynk Games.
We are committed to providing our customers the best data experience possible. This is why we announced a bold and ambitious initiative called ‘Project Leap’ that will see an investment of ` 600,000 Mn over three years to transform our network. As a part of Project Leap, we undertook one of our largest sites deployment initiatives this year, rolling out over 87,000 sites. We believe these efforts will help us perceptibly improve our network quality and deliver a differentiated customer experience.
We accelerated the growth of postpaid decisively ahead of competition through a combination of innovative propositions, retail store expansion and a relentless focus on execution. In the home broadband business, we saw tremendous growth in customer additions on the back of carefully planned micromarketing. We automated several customer-facing processes and are continuously improving the quality of our call centres, so that we can give a superior experience to our customers.
Data continues to be an important component of our portfolio. We have expanded our 4G footprint across many more cities and towns in India and have successfully positioned our brand as ‘The Smartphone Network’.
We continued our emphasis on identifying and stripping out waste from our business. In the past three years, we had set ambitious cost saving targets for ourselves and we have been able to meet them successfully.
On Airtel Payments Bank, we are the first company in India to receive a payments bank license from the RBI. This initiativereflects our strong focus on the mobile banking segment and our commitment to the Government’s vision of financial inclusion and banking services for every citizen. We believe that Airtel Payments Bank is uniquely placed to deliver quality banking services to customers, given Airtel’s deep distribution network that touches every corner of the country.
Finally, Bharti Airtel has constantly striven to be among the preferred places of work for the smartest in the industry. This year, we have been ranked 8th as the employer of choice across all companies in India. We strengthened our internal performance management processes and stepped up recruitment from the top engineering and management institutes in the country. We continue to encourage our talent to build a holistic long-term career at Airtel.
As we strive for business growth and excellence, we continue to fulfil our responsibility to the environment and our obligation to the society. We have launched our third sustainability report this year, which captures our initiatives that further put sustainability at the core of our agenda. Bharti Foundation, with full support from our employees, has been doing remarkable work in the area of promoting education among the underprivileged rural children. These initiatives have made our corporate citizenship more meaningful.
As we look ahead to the future, we have an exciting opportunity to help digitise the nation. We are determined to do this despite potential challenges such as the entry of a new operator, challenges around data penetration, network quality and pricing. We believe we are in a strong position to compete in this environment, given our spectrum and network assets, impressive customer and product portfolio, our innovations and most importantly, our people.
As we look forward to an eventful year, I would like to thank our customers, our people, our partners and our shareholders for their support and faith in us. We seek your continued guidance in our journey.
Gopal Vittal
