ALKESH DINESH MODY INSTITUTE FOR

FINANCIAL & MANAGEMENT STUDIES

RURAL MA RKETING

TOPIC: RELIANCE MOBILES

PROF: SUSHMITA MUKHERJI

CLASS: SY.B.M.S A

GROUP MEMBERS

NAME ROLLNO

ASHWATI BHASI

05

SONALI CHAUHAN

13

KRITY DUBAL

21

KOMAL JAIN

39

NEHA KAZI

51

KIMAYA KULKARNI

58

RURAL MARKETING

Rural marketing means marketing activities in the rural areas where favorable infrastructure may not be available. the study of rural market comprising of all operations, which starts with a decision to produce a saleable farm commodity and involves in the movement of farm produced food, raw materials and their derivatives such as textiles from the farms to the final consumers and the effect of such operations on producers, middlemen and consumers.

THE VARIOUS PROBLEMS FACED BY COMPANIES IN RURAL MARKET

A firm planning to venture into rural areas face lack of infrastructure facilities. The major marketing problems are

a. The agricultural technology has tried to develop the market in the rural areas. Unfortunately, the impact of technology is not felt uniformly thought the country. b. Many parts in rural India have only kacha road and many parts of the rural interiors are totally connected by the roads. The most common mode of carriers is the animal drawn cart. Because of these problems in accessibility, delivery of products and services continue to be difficult in the rural areas. c. The number of languages and dialects vary from state to state, region to region and probably from district to district. d. The number of villages in India is more than five lakhs. And they are not uniform in size. This type of distribution of population warrants appropriate strategies.

e. There is a problem of availability of suitable dealers in rural area.

A mobile revolution in rural India

The total mobile penetration may have reached 14 per cent of India's population. However, industry experts assert 13 per cent of this is in urban centers and only one per cent in villages. The opportunity is not lost on market players like Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and Reliance Communications who have been present in this segment for a while. Now Hutchison Telecom, Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices too have descended on the turf with big network expansion plans and innovative marketing strategies specially tailored for these regions.

Reliance Communications will also make investments to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 15 billion) till March 2007 to enhance its network in the eight global system for mobile communication circles it operates in. The company plans to extend its GSM network to 4,000 towns in the existing circles of Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal , Himachal Pradesh , Assam, north east, Madhya Pradesh and Kolkata . Currently, its GSM network covers 340 towns in these circles.

"Rural India is keen on high feature phones but not as much as urban India. A customer in the rural area is happy to have features, which are available in the urban markets. They are happy to have colour handsets, other accessories like phone book wherein he can store details of contacts, games, alarm tones and so on,"

History of reliance communication

The Late Dhirubhai Ambani dreamt of a digital India an India where the common man would have access to affordable means of information and communication. Dhirubhai, who single-handedly built Indias largest private sector company virtually from scratch, had stated as early as 1999: Make the tools of information and communication available to people at an affordable cost. They will overcome the handicaps of illiteracy and lack of mobility. It was with this belief in mind that Reliance Communications (formerly Reliance Infocomm) started laying 60,000 route kilometers of a pan-India fibre optic backbone. This backbone was commissioned on 28 December 2002, the auspicious occasion of Dhirubhais

70th birthday, though sadly after his unexpected demise on 6 July 2002. Reliance Communications has a reliable, high-capacity, integrated (both wireless and wireline) and convergent (voice, data and video) digital network. It is capable of delivering a range of services spanning the entire infocomm (information and communication) value chain, including infrastructure and services for enterprises as well as individuals, applications, and consulting. Today, Reliance Communications is revolutionising the way India communicates and networks, truly bringing about a new way of life.

How Anil Ambani plans to woo rural India

If you thought customers in semi-urban and rural markets were using mobile phones only to make calls, think again. If Reliance Communications Ventures Ltd is to be believed, this is a myth, which has been broken. Much to its surprise, the company realized that a sizeable portion of its customers in the towns and villages of the

Bimaru (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh , Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh states were using cell phones to log on to the Net, stream video clippings and for infotainment. GSM companies might be concentrating only on voice revenues in their quest to address the rural markets. Reliance, however, is banking on data and video to do the magic. Not that it is giving up on voice. It only means that the company is increasingly expecting a large part of the revenue to come from data. This is the key plank of Reliance's big new push into the hinterland of the country.

MARKETING STRATEGIES USED BY RELIANCE

Reliance Mobile has launched a job search service on RWorld, its VAS offering. The service would be available pan-India and is launched in tie-up with Babajob. The service would be available in five languages namely Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and English. The company through this service wants to target employees which avoid going online for searching jobs. The service provides employers a way to target offline

job seekers and thus could see more uses from tier-iii cities and rural employees jumping on to the service. The service would majorly see blue-collared jobs searches in rural market and urban market whereas less experienced white collar employees could also frequent the service. As far as Online recruitment portals are concerned majority number of people access the service in India but the less experienced one to an extent avoid going for same as mostly jobs listed on these job portals are for highly experienced employees.

Babajob has been tying up with different telcos for job search market and has penetrated very well in already Crowded Online recruitment segment. The reliance service should also have added job posting feature so as to attract SMEs and unorganized market players to the VAS recruitment services. The challenges and complexity of recruitment process still requires much more simplification in India.

Reliance Communication Announces Mobile App Contest

Now Reliance communication is running a nationwide contest for developing rural mobile applications. Contestants/Developers will have to create applications which suit the rural mobile market and will focus on transportation, m-commerce, health care services, governance, education, information, and location-based services.

Developers can submit applications for WAP, Java, Reliance Java, Brew, Brew Lite, Symbian, and VoxML environments. The criteria for judging will be user interface, innovativeness, functionality, and business potential.

sThis move has been done keeping mind the 600,000 villages which Rcom feels will cover by March 2008.

The Contest is open to all Software professionals, Software Developers, Companies, Students, self `vendor,Aggregators.

KRIBHCO and Reliance Communications Infrastructure forge Rural Marketing Joint Venture
About KRIBHCO Krishak Bharati Cooperative Limited (KRIBHCO) the world premier fertilizers producing cooperative has an outstanding track record to its credit in all spheres its activities. Incorporated in April, 1980 as a national level cooperative society to manufacture and distribute chemical fertilizer and allied farm inputs, KRIBHCO has fully imbibed the cooperative philosophy and has made sustain efforts towards promoting the cause of modern agriculture and cooperatives in the country. Having its

genesis in farmers cooperatives, social development and humane facts have always been of prime focus it its growth and philosophy an organization which owes its existence to the farmers, by the farmers and for the farmers of this great country. KRIBHCO has been marketing its product i.e. Urea, Bio-Fertilisers, Seeds through cooperatives and institutional Agencies. Besides, providing its products to Apex Level cooperative Federations / Institutions in most of the states.

KRIBHCO Reliance Kisan Limited, Joint Venture Company would create a first-of-its-kind distribution model covering 72% of Indian population through its network of over 25,000 cooperatives, 6300 member cooperatives and 60 Krishi Seva Kendras spread across the length and breadth of the country. The unique distribution model created by the Joint Venture Company would distribute a range of telecom and non-telecom services sto bridge the Urban-Rural divide. Bridging the Urban Rural Digital Divide has been among the fundamental reasons for inception of Reliance Communications. Over the last few years Reliance ADA

Group has achieved significant success in making telephony available and affordable to millions of Indians living in rural are

SWOT Analysis

Strengths Mobile Communications Arm of a Large, Well-Funded, Well-Connected and Ambitious Indian Conglomerate Economies of Scale From Large Subscriber Base Expertise in a Business Model That Allows It to Maintain High Profitability From Lower-Yielding Subscribers Weaknesses Cost Structure Disadvantage With Subscribers Spread Across Two Different Mobile Networks Low ARPU Compared With Competitors Weakness in Rural Markets Brand Positioning Limited Availability of Value-Added Services

Opportunities Aggressive Move Into the Rural Market Use Upcoming Mobile Number Portability as \"Launching Pad\" to Grab Market Share of Higher ARPU Users and Ramp Up Focus on Data Revenue Overseas Investments Lease Spare Capacity on Its CDMA Network to Mobile Virtual Network Operators Threats Quicker Than Expected Slowing of Growth in the Indian Marketplace Mobile Number Portability Risks Accelerating Churn of Subscribers From CDMA to GSM New Competitors