Vodafone unveils India strategy

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Nestled in the town of Newbury in Berkshire, some two hours’ drive from London, lies the sprawling 129 million pound headquarters of 29.4 billion pound Vodafone Group plc. Its chief executive, the 51-year-old Arun Sarin, has been making headlines in India, thanks to a high-pitched $11.1 billion takeover of Indian telecom major Hutch Essar earlier this year.

Sarin met a select group of Indian journalists for a freewheeling chat over lunch on Vodafone’s plans for the Indian market, its relationship with new Indian partners Essar Group, brand strategy and much more. Excerpts:

On future plans in India

The new things will be that you’ll see some interesting, low-cost handsets. Our basic thesis is we want to make mobile telephony more affordable to more Indian consumers. You need to be a large company to be able to do that. We’re going to put in several billion dollars’ investment into rural India on the back of some network sharing with Bharti or anybody else. If others want to join the network sharing, they can.

The public policy thing we’re trying to do is to have more Indian consumers covered. But the thing that’ll be different is the whole handset strategy. I don’t want to say much more than that. We’re bringing into India a handset that looks like a very cool high-end handset which is actually low-cost. There is further to go on handsets, and we’ll take it there. So, we come into India with network, handsets, new services—entertainment, information services—and we’ll mix it all up and then have our brand come into India. In about six to eight months, you’ll feel that Vodafone has arrived.

On the FIPB’s questions

Today, they’ve asked us 13 questions, tomorrow there may be more. But whatever they want to know, we’ll tell them. Vodafone operates in 25 countries around the world; we’ve got 200 million customers. We’re a highly transparent, highly ethical company… we have to be. I can’t sit in my office and control 60,000 people who work around the world. All I can do is make sure that everybody understands the priority of the firm and everybody executes in an ethical, transparent way.