Hutchison Essar, the Indian arm of the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa group, was operational in seven circles across the country at the end of 2002-03. These include Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Chennai.

The total subscriber base reached 21,6396 on March 31, 2003 from 6,16,311—an increase of over 350 percent. This resulted in an overall revenue of Rs 1,758 crore, making Hutch group the third-largest telecom group in the country behind Bharti and BSNL both in terms of subscribers and revenues. In addition, the group companies had changes in names in both Delhi and Kolkata during 2002-03.

Growing Footprint
As of 31 March 2003, Mumbai continued to be largest and most lucrative circle for Hutch with 665,086 subscribers. It existed there as Hutchison Max Telecom, a JV between Hutchison Whampoa and Max India and Kotak Mahindra. In Delhi, as of March 2003, Hutchison Essar Telecom had 605,485 subscribers. In Kolkata, Hutchison Telekom East Ltd (HTEL) had a base of over 274,281 customers. In Gujarat, Fascel, Gujarat’s number one cellular operator, had 457,196 subscribers.

In August 2001, Hutchison acquired additional licenses to operate 1,800 MHz mobile phone services in key areas like Karnataka (includes Bangalore), Chennai and Andhra Pradesh (includes Hyderabad) to build on the group’s existing premium footprint. Most of these operations were rolled out during 2002–03 and therefore had a substantial contribution towards Hutch coffers. As of March 2003, Hutchison Essar South Ltd. (HESL) had 55,760 subscribers in Chennai, 42,364 in Andhra Pradesh and 63,724 in Karnataka.

The year 2002–03 also saw Hutch group clearing the obstacles to increase its footprint across three more B-class circles of UP-East, Haryana and Rajasthan. This was kicked off with the transfer of the three Essar-owned Aircell Digilink licenses to one of Hutchison Telecom’s corporate vehicles. At present, Aircell Digilink has 1.93 lakh subscribers across its three circles.

Hutchison Essar also reached an agreement with Escotel to buy a licence to operate cellular services in the Punjab circle.

Hutchison also announced the launch of a customer relations center in Mumbai during the fiscal. Hutchison 3G, the multimedia communications arm of the Hutchison Whampoa group, is planning to use this center to service its 3G customers in the UK and Australia. The center will provide information, entertainment and multimedia messaging on the move.

Hutch also leveraged the hoopla around the cricket World Cup to rollout its GPRS services in India. Hutch regularly streamed action replays of daily matches to subscribers’ phones in the form of 9–10 seconds video clips.

To check the fraud cases in cellular services, Hutch also deployed the fraud management system Ranger from Subex Systems.