If there is one human need that Naveen Chopra is familiar with, it is the need to communicate. It is a universal compulsion. He is always surprised at how, the moment a network tower is put up in a town or small village, the subscribers just roll in.
“It’s amazing how people are prepared to put their money into telecom. You want to keep in touch with your daughter who has got married and gone to the next village and even if it’s just one phone call in a week, why not? You might want to get in touch with the mandi before you get on to your tractor to decide whether to go to that particular mandi or another one. “In the old days, you would just go and the wholesaler would take you for a ride. Now, you can enquire about the rate of potatoes that day and then decide if you want to go or not. These are some of the huge benefits that the mobile has brought to the market,” says Chopra.
What strikes him most about the urban market is that here operators have to be conscious of totally different things, such as which tariff plans will excite them.
For younger people, it will be an SMS package. For villagers, this will be useless as they do not know what an SMS is. The amount of differentiation among consumers is vast. For instance, higher-end customers need GPRS, so how do you price it?
“From a brand perspective, the challenge is phenomenal because, on the one hand, you have your old high-end subscribers who went mobile eight or nine years ago. For them, Hutch is an aspirational brand. On the other, you have new rural subscribers. So the challenge is how do you meet the needs of the Vasant Vihar subscriber and those of the villager, and simultaneously keep the unity and integrity of the brand,” he says.
As head of marketing, Chopra needs to understand not only what consumers want today but what current trends portend for the future and what services and products will be in demand tomorrow. He says that a lot of work goes into consumer understanding and how customers can be segmented according to their needs.
One fascinating aspect of the mobile market is how fast needs and habits are changing. These days, it is acceptable for young teenagers to have a mobile.Chopra says that his children are approaching 13 and will soon be wondering why they don’t have one.
In the West, it’s perfectly acceptable to give a mobile phone to a certain age group, with the rider that it has perhaps only a receiving type of SIM card. He can see that happening here. This would be useful not only to parents who do not want their children overusing the phone but also for elderly people who cannot handle the technology but whose children need to call them to check on their welfare.
“My father is 80 and the other day he said he needed a mobile phone. I think that’s great. Or look at a non-working woman. A woman may only go out to the market to buy vegetables but she wants her husband to be able to call her wherever she is. All management schools tell you to be sharp in delineating your target audiences but we’re in a situation where massively varied consumers with massively varied needs all need to be catered to.”
Chopra says that the next big leap will be people using services other than voice. This may seem surprising given that SMS requires a certain command over English but SMS usage is already quite high. He thinks mobile phones will be used more for entertainment. Hutch launched a high-end service with a high-end phone and was encouraged by the response. It is now launching another service offering “visual radio”.
Chopra has been in the telecom business for 18 months. Earlier, he inhabited a totally different world, selling bakery and dairy products with Britannia. “I think the mobile business teaches you that every day is another day and what you thought in the morning is no longer relevant in the evening. You should never let that trouble you. You should be able to laugh and say, fine, the rules have changed, so let me adapt fast to them,” he says.
There are, of course, certain principles of marketing that the FMCG world teaches you ?? issues of time, customer understanding, getting the price right or getting the distribution network in place. “After that, you have to adapt to your circumstances. Human beings are highly adaptive creatures. This is a great industry to be in because every day is a new day,” he smiles.
Chopra says that the telecom world does not even remotely compare with the FMCG world where he spent 16 years.He finds his current work infinitely more exciting: “I’m very happy being in this industry. I love the adrenalin rush every day and cannot wait till I get into the office to see what is going to happen. It’s an opportunity to make things happen.It’s the industry that encourages you to do that.”
He is clearly euphoric at being out of the FMCG sector. “In our business, we can think of a tariff plan in the morning and be on the radio in the evening. We do it all the time. The competition launches something today and it’s in the newspaper tomorrow. Telecom and FMCG are totally different.”
On Hutch’s penetration, he says it is good but there are some black spots ?? as there are with any mobile operator in the world. Chopra says it is also a function of what spectrum an operator is working on.If it is on 800 or 900 MHz, there is an advantage. If it’s 1800 or 1900 MHz, there is a problem with coverage within buildings. You don’t have 800-900 MHz in all circles.
Hutch has it in Delhi, Mumbai and all major cities. “In some circles, we have always been in the queue waiting for additional spectrum to be released to us. It’s not that we aren’t willing to pay for it, but the spectrum doesn’t exist,” he says.
However, he thinks that the government has understood this and is being proactive now. He hopes that the whole policy on spectrum will be clearer by the end of the year, adding that “dropped calls give us no joy at all”.
When Chopra looks at Hutch’s service, he refuses to make comparisons with other operators because, as far as he is concerned, Hutch is the benchmark. “I travel a fair amount but, believe me, we offer a fairly good cellular service in India. What motivates us all to come to the office every day is the desire to be the best. Not the biggest ?? that does not excite us if we have 50 million subscribers or 10 million. We’d rather have 10 million happy subscribers than 50 million screaming subscribers unhappy with their bills,” he says.
Chopra says his family does not like his working long hours. Weekends are devoted to his wife and children. “I don’t think of work when I’m at home. I have a great ability to switch off when I leave the office.In a word, I’m happy.”
