Tata Teleservices enters fast lane
Hindustan Times —November 23, 2005

It is almost two years to the day when Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata instructed executive director (finance) Ishaat Hussain to promptly arrange around Rs 1,500 crore for taking unified license for telecom services. People involved cancelled their visits to a Goa conference and the whole thing was wrapped up in three days flat. Despite that alacrity, Tata Teleservices has been slow in the race. Not any longer, the slow moving company has finally caught up. In the last 40 days, the company added a million subscribers.

The next million will be added much faster, on the back of the two-year `free incoming' campaign, arguably the most successful in Tata Tele's history. (Ratan Tata was in town on Monday to mark the Delhi network reaching one-million subscribers). "This is the second month in a row that we have added more subscribers than Reliance Infocomm. The offer has just taken off and is doing extremely well," said Mukund Govind Rajan, director, Tata Teleservices. And this has given the company a new confidence, driven in large measure by Ratan Tata's personal and continuous involvement as the Tata Teleservices Limted chairman.

It is now willing to pick up the market leadership gauntlet. "Mr Tata has set us a target to be number one and his vision is driving this company. We would be disappointed if we are not the market leader amongst private telecom operators by 2008. That is what we are in other sectors like automobiles, tea, hospitality and software," Rajan said. A lot of things have changed in the way Tata Teleservices Limited does business now. For starters, the entire management team has been overhauled and new faces including some expert managers have been brought in.

Both the CEO and CTO -Darryl Green and Greg Young respectively -- are hardcore telecom professionals who are assisted by homegrown stalwarts like CMO Harish Bhat (of Tanishq fame) and CIO Navin Chadha. "The new structure is in place and their combined expertise is formidable. It is all coming together," Rajan adds. To buttress the point, he cites the doing away of handset subsidies. "All that has been stopped. We have embarked on cost control and reducing operational expenditures. Other overheads have been tackled and there is much greater control on post-paid bad debt," Rajan, recently appointed to head CDMA association AUSPI, said.