Executive Summary- my summer

Executive Summary

I chose to endure, my summer internship in mobile service sector as it is the highly potential market in the current Indian market scenario. Bharti Airtel Ltd, the leading company in mobile service industry, gave me an opportunity to carry my project. Few years back, food, shelter and cloths, are the three basic need of a man and now Mobile has become the forth one. Mobile service industry has travelled a long distance in a very short span of time. The industry enjoyed the exponential growth in the urban market. But as the urban market has got enough attention, the mobile companies are now more concerned about the Great Rural Market of India which is the 65% of the total Indian population. Airtel has come up with strong strategy to capture rural market, so the company is developing its infrastructure to tap the market. Infrastructure development is the key to success in the mobile service industry as it ensure consumers to avail the services. Airtel has invested $1.8 billion to develop the infrastructure at chhattisgarh.

First three days of summer internship, I get familiar to the functioning of various departments and gathering information about the Airtel prepaid SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card sales. I also prepared a report on “Indian Telecom Industry”, some part of which is included in this project-report. I assigned to work on the measuring the scope and potential of rural market and to find out the probable retailers for prepaid SIM card/recharge coupon sales. I had to visit those villages, where Airtel was constructing their tower to ensure the network for their mobile services.

“A comprehensive study of Scope and Potential of Tele-Retail solutions in rural market of Durg District with special reference to Airtel” has following main objectives,

v  to study and measure the potential of rural market,

v  to measure the awareness for Airtel,

v  to find out the new retail solution to meet the demand of the rural market as retailers are the root to the rural market.

The scope of the study includes, determining mobile phone usage pattern as well differentiating the service of Airtel with other service providers. Primary data collected through a questionnaire, prepared during the project, consisted dichotomous (yes-no types) & multiple choice questions as well. I relied on authentic research reports, survey results, journals and websites (like TRAI.gov, Bharti Airtel) for the secondary data. Shop owners are chosen as the respondents for the questionnaire as they could be the probable retailers for the company.

During my project, I got the opportunity to interact with hundreds of people, which gave great exposure of the rural market to me. I came to know that consumer behaviour pattern of rural market is very different from the urban. Rural consumers are more price sensitive as compare to the urban consumers. They have limited resources to avail the products/services as well as they lack in disposable income. Therefore, life time validity prepared card and small top-up vouchers are more popular in rural area. Crop cycle play the important role in their buying process as after every season they have some addition amount to dispense. So they don’t mind to purchase the big amount recharge coupons, new handsets etc. I also found that BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) and Reliance communication are  expanding their network in rural area and have good consumer base as well. The study reveals that Airtel has 27.69% market share of rural market in compare to 30.76% by BSNL and 23.07% by Reliance Mobile.

During my interaction to the rural consumers, I came to know that they are facing problem regarding the coverage in rural area and they can switch to the other company easily if they don’t get the desired level of satisfaction from services. This will become the big issue when number portability act will come into existence. In this situation retailers can play the major role to maintain the existing customer as well to make the new one. Retailers play the role of opinion leader in the rural market as they influence the consumer in buying decision. In distribution channel retailer has important role because they interact directly with consumers and thus become an importance source of feedback for company. If retailers are with offered with some good incentive schemes as well training they will surely help the company a lot to tap the market.

Every project gives a platform to further studies in the same field; same as this project has scope of further studies in area to compare the growth rate before and after establishing network tower in the villages. Further study can also be done to measure the impact of retailers in influencing existing customers to use more services and adding new customer for the company. At last, Going Rural is the mantra of success in current business scenario and mobile service providers can give the platform to other product/service to enter in the foray to capture the untapped rural market as the most powerful and the fastest means of communication.