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As part of its new market segmentation strategy, AirTel mobile service has unveiled a number of new products targeting the youth, women and senior citizens. To initiate this strategy, AirTel would target the youth with Friendz, a pre-paid plan for Rs 249.

“To drive market expansion, it is imperative that we reach out to consumer segments that have been hitherto not addressed directly. These new products are being launched in order to increase our focus on three segments: youth, women, and senior citizens. As we move forward, more and more customers will be coming from these three segments and that's why we have designed products for the same,” informed Atul Bindal, Bharti Cellular group's chief marketing officer and director of mobility.

The 'Friendz' pre-paid card would include phone-to-phone (P2P) recharge that enables the consumer to transfer talk time and validity to any Airtel prepaid subscriber. “In Singapore P2P recharge increased the phone usage by leaps and bound and we are hoping that same would happen in India too,” said Pratik Pota, vice-president (marketing), Bharti Tele-Ventures.

Other services launched with this initiative include hotspot tariff, wherein all Airtel Friendz customers calling from pre-designated hotspots within the city will be able to make outgoing calls at discounted rates.

The other segmented initiatives launched by the company include post-paid plans for ladies and senior citizens. The ladies' post-paid plan has a monthly rental of Rs 150 and under this plan users will be able to enjoy a special discount while calling any three local Airtel numbers without any additional monthly charge for the facility.

Starting with a monthly rental of Rs 150, the seniors' plan offers a discount on one STD number and one local Airtel number.

For the cellular industry pre-paid business is bringing in more subscribers but the low returns do not produce the desired revenue. According to Bindal, for every post-paid connection there are almost 4.5 pre-paid connections and Airtel hope to tap into the youth and senior citizen segment to boost cell usage.

Anurag Prasad