The largest telecom operator of India, Vodafone Idea seems to have come up with a feature phone strategy of its own for the Indian consumers. Vodafone Idea has partnered up with phone manufacturer Lava to launch an offer for all Lava A1 feature phone owners. As part of this offer, all Lava A1 users will be able to get three months unlimited talk time from Vodafone and Idea Cellular both. To get the benefits of this offer, Lava A1 users will have to recharge their Vodafone or Idea number with Rs 348 recharge which will avail them unlimited talk time for 84 days. Not only this, but the recharge will also ship 100 SMS per day to the subscribers.
Offer Valid Till March 2019
Vodafone Idea is offering this scheme for new subscribers of the telco as well. For subscribers buying a Vodafone or Idea SIM for the first time and using it on the Lava A1, they will have to recharge their number with the first time recharge of Rs 351 to get the benefits of this offer. Lava has notified that this scheme will be live for all the Vodafone and Idea subscribers in all circles till March 31, 2019.
Notably, this strategy by Lava and Vodafone Idea seems to be a sign of a war against Reliance Jio’s JioPhone which saw significant success in the Indian market. Thanks to the JioPhone, Reliance Jio was able to add more than 25 million subscribers. Now, Vodafone Idea seems to be countering Reliance Jio’s success with its latest offer oriented towards the feature phone users.
Lava to Launch New 4G Feature Phones
JioPhone’s success has been attributed mainly to its very affordable pricing and support for favourite apps like Facebook and WhatsApp. Testing the same markets, Lava being another feature phone manufacturer is in talks with Chinese chipset manufacturer Unisoc and is likely preparing to launch an affordable 4G smartphone in India soon. To recall, Unisoc, previously known as Spreadtrum Communications is one of the chipset providers for JioPhone and JioPhone 2.
Vodafone Rs 597 Plan for Feature Phone Users
It's worth noting that this is not the first time that Vodafone is shipping a plan for feature phone users. Back in October, Vodafone had announced a new Rs 597 prepaid plan for both feature phone users and smartphone users which provided 168 days of validity for feature phone users and 112 days of validity for smartphone users. The total data benefit in this plan was 10GB for the entire validity period, along with calling with a daily and weekly cap. Additionally, this plan also ships 100 SMS per day to the subscribers. This plan was likely introduced by Vodafone to counter Bharti Airtel's Rs 597 prepaid offer which doesn't provide any unique benefits to the feature phone users.
However, with these prepaid plans being launched by the newly merged telco it is getting clear that Vodafone Idea is strategising to get more and more feature phone subscribers under its flag, to give a substantial competition to Reliance Jio.
