"The years teach much which the days never knew." Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays

This simple yet powerful thought of Emerson most appropriately summarises the idea of V&D100. Unknowingly, we have all been driven by a desire to show you (and probably ourselves as well) that the impact of time cannot always be measured by the classic Newtonian way of summing up the parts to get the whole. A year indeed tells us more than what the 365 days together can.

And sometimes that tale could be more than just "more". It could be qualitatively different as well.

As our survey will show you. Well, let us be honest. Everyone of us has been discussing the slowdown for last few months. And the impact that it was going to have on our business, our daily lives. And again, though one does not rule out the hype element, a great part of these concerns are valid.

That is about the days. Let us look at the year 2000-01. The first financial year of the new millennium. And it tells a different story. The industry—especially the industries which were supposed to be badly hit, like carrier infrastructure equipment—grew impressively, some big companies registering about 80-125 percent growths.

There has to be some catch somewhere.

Yes, there is. And that itself, we feel, is the biggest change to have happened last year. We would even say, the most important fundamental change.

And that is, for the first time since telecom liberalisation in India, more executive time in service provider companies, was spent in thinking out and implementing business plans than in handling DoT and TRAI.

In that sense, the year 2000-01, was the first business year for India’s telecom service provider industry. And let us be clear—in countries like India, this is still the most important thing. Because how exactly the consumer would spend for communication, is something that—let us admit it—most of us (that includes service providers) do not know. It is finally time to explore.

The Year That Was

As this change of priorities took place, a lot of things started falling into place automatically. While not taking out the credit from the marketing managers, we believe this is what explains the boom in cellular industry.

Also, the service providers in India started behaving like a structured industry, following international norms. And so did we, as the ones tracking the industry. So this year, we have presented the communication service industry and equipment industry separately, as is the international norm. Just to make it easier for the readers, the other services like network integration, and telecom software have also been shown separately. (Well, if you still want to compare with the previous year, all of them, put together, grew by the better-than-last-year growth rate of 25.13 percent, reaching a figure of Rs. 57,560.53 crore).

The size of communication services industry reached a whopping Rs 34,538.15 crore. While Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and its cousin MTNL accounted for as much as 28,765.98 crore, the growth in Internet services and cellular was impressive.

The size of the entire equipment industry stood at Rs. 17,868.63 crore. Of course, the lion’s share was that of the carrier infrastructure equipment and turnkey industry.

Other services accounted for Rs 5,108.75 crore. If you think that is too big a figure, the next sentence should more than convince you. Out of that Rs 4,100 crore came from telecom software.Yes, for your record, the combined revenues of communication companies zoomed by 26.1 percent. Compared to Rs 53,173.52 crore in 1999-2000, the figure stood at Rs. 65,034 crore in 2000-01. That is a growth of 22.3 percent. The combined revenue of V&D 100 companies stood at 61,628.51 crore. This is 26.15 percent more than last year’s figure.