Spice Communications, the Modi Group held company, grew 31.2 percent to reach a turnover of Rs 486.7 crore, as compared to an extraordinary growth of 146 percent last year. The subscriber base grew by 75.1 percent to reach 4.7 lakh. In revenue terms, 59.1 percent came from Punjab while the rest 40.9 percent came from Karnataka. In terms of subscriber break-up, only 35 percent of the subscribers were from Karnataka, while 65 percent were from Punjab. Spice Communications’ ARPU is one of the highest in the country.

The parent company, SpiceCorp sold the sister company SpiceCell to Bharti. While there were speculations that Spice Communications would also get sold, it has not happened so far. The presence in two of the highest potential markets, that are geographically so apart, and no commonality makes the company manage the two operations almost as two companies. While in Punjab, it has one of the highest spread of network and the revenue is quite distributed, in Karnataka, revenue is generated from the state capital and the infotech city—Bangalore.

With increased competition from bigger companies, it will be a challenging task before the company to compete. Most industry observers expect some M&A activity as far as Spice is concerned.

Spice Communications TURNOVER FACTSHEET CEO : Dilip Modi Year of Start-up : 1997 Area of Operation : Cellular service Address : Ground Floor, SpiceCorp Tower, 98 Nehru Place, New Delhi 110 019 Tel : 011-622 4544 Fax : 011-628 4579 Web site : www.spiceindia.com S W O T Strength  : No 1 player in both the circles Weakness : Isolated presence in a market of scale Opportunity : Leading a partnership with other operators to form a fourth front Threat  : Bigger competitors