After posting a ‘satisfying’ results in the first quarter, which the company describes as a ?historic one?, Bharti Airtel CEO Manoj Kohli told FE?s Rishi Raj in an exclusive interview that the rural market has now started paying back on its investments. Kohli iterated that the telecom growth story was intact and customer usage, even in rural areas, would pick up with time. Excerpts:

You are satisfied with your performance during the quarter. However, there are concerns by analysts that with more and more rural penetration, the company’s revenue might get stretched in coming quarters. In fact, on a sequential basis your revenues have shown a marginal growth.

The slow growth in quarter-on-quarter revenue is largely because of the impact of termination charge, which was reduced by Rs 0.10. Going forward, it would get stabilised. However, the best thing to have happened is that the rural markets have now started paying us back. Our three years of investment is now fructifying. There’s no concern at all that our revenues would get stretched because of moving deeper into rural markets. We are adding around 2 million customers a month in rural markets and so far the rural penetration is only 10%. So there’s huge scope.

The average realisation per user (Arpu) has been declining but for the last few quarters, even the minutes of usage have been on the decline. Isn’t this a worrying trend?

There has been a very small decline in the minutes of usage during the quarter. As we move into rural markets, it will take some time for usage to pick up. We are not at all worried. The telecom growth story is intact and now is the time when the rural market is paying back. Our distribution is growing strongly and we are already covering 75% of the villages. In the times to come, rural markets will grow and reach the levels of cities.

Going forward, what will drive the telecom market in the country?

Customer usage is bound to go up and slowly people will move more towards dynamic content. Broadband and DTH would grow. There would be adequate scope for value-added services.