Businesses go where they find consumers. Booming Gujarat??with the highest double-digit GDP growth of 11.05% for the five years ending March 2009??offers aplenty. Little wonder then that the state has emerged as the country?s most valuable telecom circle in the ongoing auction of 3G spectrum, beating favourite Delhi, after four days of bidding. The 3G bidders valued the state at Rs 459.52 crore against Rs 437.65-crore for Delhi.
The state?s blend of prosperous consumers with relatively low tele-density (60%) compared to saturated metros like Delhi and Mumbai, makes Gujarat the next growth frontier for telecom services, specially high-value, entertainment and utilities-led that 3G purports to offer.
Amongst big states, Gujarat emerges second only to Maharashtra in per capita state GDP, at Rs 31,780 (2007-08). Seven Gujarat cities??Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Jamnagar, Bhavnagar, Vadodara & Surat??figure amongst the top 100 cities in India on consumer market size, according to a study by Indicus Analytics.
Between these seven cities, there is a market of around Rs 1-lakh-crore, almost as big as Delhi! And, unlike many other big states, prosperity in Gujarat is spread across rural and urban areas, and makes for a bigger footprint for any marketer. The 215 odd peri-urban towns??with population less than one lakh??in Gujarat account for another Rs 41,000-crore market, one of the richest in the country. In fact, peri-urban towns in the state?s Ahmedabad and Valsad districts account for the highest number of millionaire households in the country, 20,000 and 16,600, respectively.
Rural Gujarat, connected by pucca roads and electrification, accounts for a Rs 77,000-crore market for consumer goods and services. The state boasts of developed farming techniques, providing fertile ground for selling data applications among farmers.
In terms of average revenue per user, Gujarat ranks lower than Delhi and Mumbai at Rs 170 per month. According to Romal Shetty, KPMG telecom analyst, ?Gujarat has a larger population than Delhi and Mumbai but the tele-density is lesser, so growth potential is higher.?