Members 6.61 crore (2014) Founded 1996 | Industry Telecommunications Customer service 1800 266 1515 Founder Ratan Tata | |
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Key people Ratan Tata(Interim Chairman)Srinath Narasimhan(MD & CEO) Products Fixed-line and mobile telephony, broadband and fixed-line internet services, digital television and network services Revenue ₹31.91 billion (US$470 million) (2011) Profiles | ||
Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) (BSE: 532371) is an Indian broadband and telecommunications service provider based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is a subsidiary of the Tata Group, an Indian conglomerate. It operates under the brand name Tata DoCoMo in various telecom circles of India.
Contents
History
In November 2008, Japanese telecom giant NTT Docomo picked up a 26 per cent equity stake in Tata Docomo, a subsidiary of Tata Teleservices, for about ₹130.7 billion (US$1.9 billion) or an enterprise value of ₹502.69 billion (US$7.5 billion). NTT DOCOMO announced on 25 April 2014 that they are going to sell 100% of their shares in Tata DOCOMO to Tata Teleservices and exit Indian Telecom. The reason for exit is because of huge loss of $1.3 billion.
In February 2008, TTSL announced that it would provide CDMA mobile services targeted towards the youth, in association with the Virgin Group on a franchisee model basis. By April 1, 2015, all Virgin Mobile CDMA & GSM customers have been migrated into the umbrella Tata Docomo brand (Tata Indicom for Delhi NCR).
Currently Tata Teleservices provides mobile services under the following brand names:
Market data
Tata Indicom in April 2009, crossed the 35 million subscribers mark in the wireless category with an overall subscriber base of over 36 million.
Tata Teleservices is #2 in terms of market share in Delhi NCR region with a subscriber base of 5 million.
Business areas
Tata Teleservices offers multiple tariff plans in both the Post-paid and Pre-Paid category. It also offers Mobile Value Added Services to subscriberss.
Branding
Tata Teleservices launched the Virgin Mobile brand to target the youth segment.
Rural Telephony
TTSL also maintains a distribution network across villages, wherein people are appointed and trained by TTSL – who visit villages on a bicycle or a two-wheeler at defined times on defined days of the week, selling recharge vouchers and servicing equipment; each runner covers between 200 and 300 customers.
The company joined hands with Tata Chemicals, Tata Kisaan Sansar network, disseminating information through these centres and using them as local distributors.
Retail
The company's retail business has around 3,000 outlets nationally, comprising 600 TTSL owned stores and around 2,500 stores in the Franchisee format. Tata Indicom (now known as Tata DoCoMo CDMA) already covers the top 700 towns in India in terms of population through Tata DoCoMo CDMA Exclusive Stores.
Tata Docomo also maintains an online portal for its customers i-choose where the customers can buy Tata DoCoMo CDMA post-paid connections and prepaid recharge vouchers with an upfront commitment of activation and delivery of the handset within 72 hours.
Value added services
Tata Teleservices, in October 2007 launched Tata Zone, an infotainment portal on Tata Docomo BREW-enabled mobile phones, in Hindi. This service has applications, pricing details, downloads and browsing instructions in Hindi.
The rationale behind this was simple: - 66% of all Indians speak Hindi, while less than 5% understand English.
Under its VAS bouquet, TTSL offers services such as News, Games, Faith and Prayers, Ringtones, Streaming TV, Fun Shows, Video Zone, Song Download Express, Cricket, Internet Surfing, Astrology, and Mobile Office among others.
Tata DoCoMo CDMA plans to provide m-commerce, mobile advertising and social networking under its VAS offerings.
NTT DoCoMo exit
NTT DoCoMo announced on 25 April 2014 that they are going to sell 100% of their shares in Tata Docomo to Tata Teleservices and exit Indian Telecom. The reason for exit is because of huge loss of $780 million during financial year ending 31 March 2014 .