PROJECT REPORT

ON

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF MARKETING STRATEGIES OF RELIANCE

JIO & BHARTI AIRTEL
CONTENT

1.Objective of the study

2.Introduction of the topic

 Jio
 Airtel

3.Telecom sector in india

 Background
 Company profile of Jio and Airtel
 The magic

4.Comparison between marketing strategy of Jio and Airtel

5. Research Methodology

 Type of research methodology

 Data collection method
 Method of collection

6.Data Analysis and Interpretation

7. SWOT analysis

8. Suggestion & Conclusion

9. Recommendations
 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

Every organization has to achieve its organization goals. For this it is

very essential for an organization to know about the view of
consumers and their competitive products. This survey research may be
also aimed as to estimate potential buyer for the product. The objective
of the study is as under:-

1.To identify the difference between market performance of Reliance

Jio and Bharti Airtel.

2.To study the market of Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel on big scale
telecommunication sector.

3.To compare various parameters of marketing strategies,

manufacturing process, technology adopted production policy,
advertising, collaboration, export scenario, future prospect for the two
companies and government policies.

4.To study customer buying behavior and factors which influence the
purchase decision process.

5.To know how the company has been successful in encountering the
aggressive marketing strategies of competitors.
Reliance Jio

Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, is an Indian mobile network

operator. Owned by Reliance Industries and headquartered
in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, it operates a national LTE network
with coverage across all 22 telecom circles. Jio does not
offer 2G or 3Gservice, and instead uses voice over LTE to
provide voice service on its network.

Jio soft launched on 27 December 2015 (the eve of what would

have been the 83rd birthday of Reliance Industries
founder Dhirubhai Ambani), with a beta for partners and
employees, and became publicly available on 5 September 2016.
As of 31 December 2018, it is the third largest mobile network
operator in India and the nineth largest mobile network operator in
the world with over 280.117 million subscribers.

On 5 July 2018, fixed line broadband service named Gigafiber,

was launched by the Reliance Industries Limited's
chairman Mukesh Ambani, during the company's Annual General
Meeting.
Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel Limited is an Indian

global telecommunications services company based in New
Delhi, India. It operates in 20 countries across South
Asia and Africa. Airtel provides GSM, 3G, 4G LTE mobile
services, fixed line broadband and voice services depending upon
the country of operation. Airtel had also rolled out
its VoLTE technology across all Indian telecom circles
except Jammu and Kashmir and Andaman and is likely to launch
in these circles soon.[8] It is the second largest mobile network
operator in India and the third largest mobile network operator in
the world with over 438.04 million subscribers.[9][10] Airtel was
named India's second most valuable brand in the first ever
Brandz ranking by Millward Brown and WPP plc.

Airtel is credited with pioneering the business strategy of

outsourcing all of its business operations except marketing, sales
and finance and building the 'minutes factory' model of low cost
and high volumes. The strategy has since been adopted by
several operators. Airtel's equipment is provided and maintained
by Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia Networks whereas IT support is
provided by IBM.

The transmission towers are maintained by subsidiaries and joint

venture companies of Bharti including Bharti Infratel and Indus
Towers in India. Ericsson agreed for the first time to be paid by
the minute for installation and maintenance of their equipment
rather than being paid up front, which allowed Airtel to provide low
call rates of ₹1 (1.4¢ US)/minute.
Telecom sector in India

India is the world's second-largest telecommunications market,

with around 1.19 billion subscribers as of November 2018. The
telecom market can be split into three segments – wireless,
wireline and internet services. As of November 2018, the wireless
market accounted for 98.16 per cent of India’s total
telecommunication subscriber base. Wireless subscriptions
witnessed a CAGR of 19.61 per cent to reach 1,183.41 million at
the end of FY18.
India is also the second largest country in terms of internet
subscribers with 560.01 million internet subscribers, as of
September 2018. India became the world’s fastest-growing
market for mobile applications in the first quarter of 2018 and
remained as the world’s fastest growing market for Google Play
downloads in the second and third quarter of 2018.
Strong policy support from the government has been crucial to the
sector’s development. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) cap in the
telecom sector has been increased to 100 per cent from 74 per
cent.
To propel the sector on a growth path, the Government of India
has launched the National Digital Communications Policy, 2018,
which envisages attracting investments worth US$ 100 billion in
the telecommunications sector by 2022.
Comparative analysis between jio and airtel

India’s two top telecom operators, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, are
locked in a tight competition which has triggered another round of
price war in the industry. But unlike the 3G price war in 2012 or 4G
price war in 2016, the new battle isn’t about who is offering the lowest
price but who can sell for free and for how long. And then, there’s a
revived interest in targeting the lower tier of userbase that is still using
the 2G feature phones.

How it started

It all began with Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio rolling out its
commercial operations in September last year. Despite being a late
entrant to India’s telecom space, Jio came all guns blazing with
aggressive data plans, over-the-top (OTT) app ecosystem and unlimited
free voice calls.
Within the first month of its launch, Jio added a whopping 16 million
subscribers. Jio’s expansion was mainly driven by free usage under the
Preview Offer, Welcome Offer and Happy New Year Offer – which
roughly covered the initial six-seven months. Soon, rivals Airtel and
Vodafone came up with similarly priced data plans to prevent their
users from migrating to Jio.

Raining freebies

Airtel in March this year announced a Surprise offer, giving away free
30GB data for three months – similar to what Reliance Jio had been
offering until then. Airtel next month extended the plan for another
three months. Reliance, meanwhile, continued to shower freebies
under its Dhan Dhana Dhan offer. Just this week, Reliance Jio
announced a cashback offer on Rs 399 recharge whereas Airtel
introduced a Rs 999 plan to offer 50GB data and unlimited calls.
Looking at the trend, it’s highly unlikely any of these companies will be
stopping these freebies.

Revived interest in low-end phones

Before the 3G and 4G-era, Indian telecom operators sold carrier-locked
CDMA phones. These CDMA phones came with voice and SMS benefits.
For example, RCom users could make calls and send SMSes to the same
network for free. Later, the trend transformed into partnerships
between telecom operators and smartphone companies to offer
bundled data and voice benefits.

Reliance, earlier this year, introduced a smart feature phone called

JioPhone. This strategy aimed at expanding base to feature phone users
who were still oblivious to the ongoing 4G boom in the country. Not
only is Jio offering free voice calls and data benefits, it’s also offering
the phone for a really low price – Rs 1,500, which is also refundable
after three years.

Airtel has also adopted a similar strategy with one major difference – it
is not launching self-branded phones, but rather partnering with OEMs
to offer bundled data benefits to bring down the price of entry-level
smartphones to a feature phone. The Karbonn A40, the first phone
under such a partnership, is available for an effective price of Rs 1,399.
According to reports, Idea Cellular, Vodafone and state-run BSNL are
also planning to launch similarly priced smartphones, with bundled
data benefits.

Why feature phones?

Contrary to popular belief, markets such as India are still home to a

large number of feature phone users. According to a recent
CounterPoint Research report, 400 million feature phones were sold in
2016.

“Close to 200 million 4G Feature phones to be potentially sold in India

in next five years bridging the digital divide, an opportunity for OEMs as
well as Operators,” said the report.

“In the process, we could see the smartphone market growth might
slow down a bit as the laggard feature phone users who eventually
would have purchased a smartphone will delay the purchase for the 4G
feature phone,” it added.
A smart feature phone or a smartphone?

An ultra-low-cost smartphone brings an aspirational element that is

expected to woo feature phone consumers who have long sought a
touch-screen phone but never had the budget for it. The JioPhone
caters to the customers who are okay with a feature phone design but
want access to smartphone-like features such as video calling, internet
browsing, multimedia streaming and so forth.

Parv Sharma, who is an analyst at CounterPoint research firm, told

Hindustan Times, “Comparing a feature phone to a smartphone is not
an Apple to Apple comparison. A consumer decides between a
feature/smartphone depending on their needs e.g. feature phone users
look for familiarity and better battery life etc.”

Commenting on Airtel’s focus on low-end 4G phones, he said,

“Affordable smartphones are already available in the market and
Airtel’s strategy is to offer similar phones, with a down payment of $40.
This strategy may face challenges when trying to convince existing
featurephone users to upgrade to smartphones. Further, the cash back
offered on the device will be settled in 3 years but such devices usually
have a lifecycle of about two years.”

“Moreover, in the coming quarter, we will see more offerings from

Itel/Tecno for smartphones in the region of $50 which will be better
than Airtel’s current offering. So, this could be a tough sell for Airtel
unless they offer a yearly upgrade,” he added.

Summing up, the ongoing battle between the top telecom operators is
ultimately going to benefit the customers and the industry alike. From
mobile banking to multimedia streaming, availability of affordable high-
speed mobile internet has opened up new avenues for the industry.

India is estimated to have more than 500 million mobile internet users
by 2017, an encouraging figure for companies such as Netflix, Google
and Apple that are banking on India’s data growth. For customers,
there’s already a gradual shift to video calling and instant messaging as
the primary mode of communication, all possible because of high-
speed and affordable mobile data.
SWOT Analysis of Reliance Jio

Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited or Jio as it is popularly known as a

mobile network service based on LTE technology owned by the Reliance
Industries. The company whose headquarters is in Navi Mumbai offers
wireless 4 G network services and has the credit of being the only
VoLTE operator in India currently.

The network covers the whole of India and is the largest Internet
Service provider in the country. Reliance Jio launched its services for
the first time in 2015 and became commercial in September 2016. The
company currently has a gross revenue of 108.9 million as of the year
2016-17.
Strengths in the SWOT analysis of Reliance Jio :

Strengths are defined as what each business does best in its gamut of
operations which can give it an upper hand over its competitors. The
following are the strengths of Reliance Jio:

 Strongest Customer Acquisition strategy – Reliance Jio probably

has the best customer acquisition strategy till date. The brand
offered their services for free for 3-6 months to all their users.
This resulted in millions of users using Reliance Jio and resulted in
one of the best customer acquisition strategy in the history of
telecom.

 Strong customer base – Jio boasts of a whopping 100 million

subscribers in the first 170 days of its launch a record which no
 other provider has been able to register. This has also made
Reliance Jio India’s largest Internet Service Provider.

 Technology – Jio currently uses the latest 4 G LTE technology

which is one of the world’s best technologies for the future. This is
supported by Voice over LTE which makes it scalable and
supportive of 5G and 6 G technologies which are expected to be
the future in wireless communication.

 Strong backing of parent company Reliance Industries: Reliance

Industries is a credible brand which echoes with Indian sentiments
and has high trust amongst customers. The association of Jio with
Reliance acts as a core strength.

 Brand Management – The reason for the huge customer base of

Reliance Jio is the brand management strategies that it has
adopted. The right promotion backed by lucrative offers and
credible brand ambassadors like ShahRukh Khan and Amitabh
Bachchan have helped in building connectivity with the
customers.
  Fast and wide network – Reliance Jio has a presence in all 22
telecom circles in India and is known to be a robust and fast
network with zero connectivity issues.

 Multiple offerings under a single name – Reliance Jio offers a

variety of services like movies, games, shopping, chats, and
messenger etc. giving the customer a lot of options to choose
from.

Weaknesses in the SWOT analysis of Reliance Jio :

Weaknesses are used to refer to areas where the business or the brand
needs improvement. Some of the key weaknesses of Reliance Jio are:

 Late entry into the market: Reliance Jio has made a late foray into
the market which already had established players like Airtel and
Vodafone who had occupied a place in the minds of the customer.
 Activation Issues – Reliance Jio faced numerous gestation issues
owing to not being able to contain the huge volumes of customers
it had acquired. On such was delays in SIM Card activation during
the period that followed its launch.
  Pricing Controversies – Reliance Jio was criticised for having
lowered its prices beyond what was ethical to penetrate into the
market and this stirred allegations like corruption and money
laundering against them.
 Too many freebies – Reliance Jio currently offers many services
for free and this was one reason for share increase in sales.
However, the company may not be able to afford all of them in
the long run which may affect the business negatively.
 Data connection poor – The data connection is many times poor
from Reliance Jio and the range is less causing slower loading
speeds in selected regions.

Opportunities for the SWOT analysis of Reliance Jio :

Opportunities refer to those avenues in the environment that

surrounds the business on which it can capitalize to increase its returns.
Some of the opportunities include:

 Future driven technology – Reliance Jio uses VoLTE 4G network

which is scalable to accommodate
 5G and 6G technologies.This offers numerous avenues to Jio or
future expansion of bandwidth.
  Apps – Reliance Jio has VoLTE which has a lot of scope in terms of
bandwidth.Thus they can offer apps to customers which are
chargeable or even free initially and pay per use later.
 Competitive Pricing Strategies – Reliance Jio prides itself on being
a low-cost Internet service provider and mobile operator. This can
be used as a positioning to target more markets and grow their
market share since most of their competitors’ cannot afford their
prices.
 Expansion to other countries – Currently Reliance Jio is
operational only in India. There is, however, a lot of scope for
expansion to foreign countries at least in the neighboring regions.

Threats in the SWOT analysis of Reliance Jio :

Threats are those factors in the environment which can be detrimental

to the growth of the business. Some of the threats include:

 Risk of loss of customers – Customers prefer Jio primarily because

of the low prices that they offer. At a stage when the company
increases its price there may be a loss of customers.
 Removal of free services – Jio currently is associated with a lot of
freebies.Once these are removed there may be a drop in sales for
the company.
  Criticism and negative image – Reliance Jio has been embroiled in
a lot of controversies from the time it was started. These have
resulted in a negative brand image for the company.
 Poor Code of ethics – Many of the strategies adopted by Reliance
Jio such as the low pricing, free bandwidth and market
 penetration strategies have been showcased as unethical and this
may affect the goodwill of the business in the long run.

SWOT Analysis of Bharti Airtel

One of the top telecommunication companies in India, Airtel has spread

across far and wide in the last 2 decades of its existence. The company
is known for its availability and its smart range of value added services.
Here we present you the SWOT analysis of Airtel to understand the
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the company.

Strengths in the SWOT analysis of Airtel

1.Renowned Telecom company: With its 19+ years of rich experience in

telecom industry this MNC had travelled far to become world’s 3rd
largest telecom operator overseas with operations in nearly 20
countries.

2.High Brand Equity: It is one of the pioneer brands in

telecommunication having a high brand recall and with a whopping
subscriber base.
3.Extensive infrastructure: With the formation of Indus tower & due to
its partnership with Idea & Vodafone, the infrastructure of Airtel has
extended in all parts of the country resulting into nationwide
penetration.

4.Strategic Alliances: The company has top notch stakeholders, namely

Sony Ericsson, Nokia and singtel, and the recent one being Apple. Such
strategic alliances boost the brand equity and the bottom line of the
company.

5.Torchbearer of the telecom Industry: With its number 1 spot due to

its excellent services in developing economies, Airtel has
interconnected the life of people in an highly efficient way. Thus, where
Vodafone is an external entrant, Airtel is a leading nationwide player in
India and the torchbearer of the telecom industry in India.

Weaknesses in the SWOT analysis of Airtel

1.Outsourced Operations: Outsourcing operations helped Airtel in

lowering its cost. But on the other hand, they are running the risk of
being dependent on some other companies which may affect its
operations.

2.Venturing into African operations: Although it’s been 4 years that

Airtel has acquired Zain’s Africa business, but Airtel is still struggling to
turn around the unit which was bought at a whoppy 9 billion dollars.
3.High Debt: With its acquisitions turning out to bad investment, and
credit being high and margins being low, Airtel group is under high
debt. Airtel does not have as deep pockets as Vodafone.

Opportunities in the SWOT analysis of Airtel

1.Strategic Partnership: Partnering with smart phone companies is

going to be a smart strategy as far as MNP (mobile number portability
in India) is concerned. This will ensure fixed cash flows in the future and
a higher customer base.

2.Market Development: With fierce competition in the telecom

industry & shrinking margins, venturing out in new markets/developing
economies will prove fruitful for the company.

3.VAS: VAS (Value Added services) is going to future of the

telecommunication industry & by specializing itself in this vertical Airtel
can differentiate itself in highly competitive market. With introduction
of unique services, Airtel can avail higher margins.

4.Untapped geography of the current market: Although it is currently

providing 3G & 4G services, but these services are limited to specific
geographical locations. Expansion of these services to most of its
regions will help the company get more margins and customers.
5.LTE: The whole wireless world is moving towards LTE (long term
evolution or 4G). LTE for mobile broadband can be a good solution for
India where fixed broadband penetration is otherwise low. Airtel has
taken the lead with this version of LTE in 4 cities, but deployment needs
to catch up pace. Despite a weak LTE ecosystem in India, Airtel should
portray itself as the embracer of that technology. The company lacks
nationwide 3G license with spectrum in 13 out of 22 telecom service
areas. Airtel’s LTE network for mobile broadband is still confined to only
4 cities in India.

Threats in the SWOT analysis of Airtel

1.Government Regulatory Framework: With the auction of spectrum &

change in the government policies on a regular basis, it is a potential
threat to the stability & existence of this industry thereby affecting the
players.

2.Competition: Price war in the home market and declining margins

due to this is adversely affecting the overall business of the group.

3.MNP (Mobile number portability): MNP gives the customer

independence to change the service provider while retaining the
number and as Airtel charges are premium over other service
providers, it can see slump in subscriber base in the next fiscal year
with PAN India MNP applicable from May 3rd 2015.