Bharti Airtel Finds Its Way Back into Growth and Stability After Two Years of Data Tariff War

It is very well known that the data tariff war which was started by the entry of Mukesh Ambani led telecom operator Reliance Jio, pushed the other telecom operators to the brink of losses and heavily damaged the balance sheet of these companies. However, there is one telecom operator which has managed to climb out of the pit finally and is making impressive improvements to its financial parameters and is also starting to regain its dominance. The telco we are talking about is Bharti Airtel. The Sunil Bharti Mittal led telco has managed to get stability in the market finally and has even witnessed positive influence in its financial tickers like ARPU, subscriber base, profitability, among others. Here are some of the reasons which have helped Airtel in getting back on the path of positive growth after the data tariff war.

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Positive Effects on ARPU and Other Financial Metrics

The start of this positive growth for Bharti Airtel began with the introduction of the minimum recharge plans and the discontinuation of the talk time prepaid plans. After the data tariff war, the telco was experiencing meagre average revenue per user (ARPU), which is a critical industry parameter. To weed out low paying subscribers, the telecom operator decided to do away with talk time plans and introduced a minimum recharge plan starting at Rs 35 per month. This move, although pushed a lot of subscribers out of Airtel’s subscriber sheet, it also helped the telco in boosting its ARPU and paved the way for further improvement.

The proof is found in the latest financial reports of Bharti Airtel which show that the telco reported an ARPU of Rs 123 in March as opposed to the Rs 104 ARPU in December month, thus denoting an 18.6% growth. With this rise in ARPU, Bharti Airtel is only a few points behind as Reliance Jio currently boasts of an ARPU of Rs 126.2.