The majority of telecom towers that we see from the terrace of our buildings are set up by Bharti Infratel. It owns, deploys, and maintains the majority of telecom towers in our country.
This also makes it one of the most important companies of our country and at the same time, it is also one of the least known companies among the masses.
So in this case study on marketing strategy of Bharti Infratel, we would learn about Bharti Infratel as a company, its marketing mix, and marketing strategies followed by the digital presence and competitor analysis. So let us start by knowing more about the company in the next section.
About Bharti Infratel
Bharti Infratel, now known as Indus Towers, was founded by the infamous Bharti Airtel in the year 2007 as a telecommunication infrastructure company, headquartered in Gurugram, India.
It is presently known as Indus Towers as Bharti Infratel was merged with Indus Towers in November 2020, which also made it India’s largest tower infrastructure company.
The major business operations of this company are telecom towers and related infrastructure materials. As previously said, it owns, deploys, and manages telecom towers. It is a business-to-business (B2B) operating entity and all major telecom service providers like Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India (Vi), and BSNL fall under its client portfolio.
It is also a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel and is also a listed entity on the NSE and BSE as Indus Towers.
Now that we know a bit about this Bharti Infratel, let us understand more about Bharti Infratel by understanding its marketing mix.
Marketing Mix of Bharti Infratel
Marketing Mix is a marketing model that involves particulars, which create a foundation for a company to work on its controllable elements to capture a significant market share and consumer traffic for a business. These activities involve the product/service line of the company, the pricing strategy, distribution methods, and promotional enhancements.
So, let us start with understanding Bharti Infratel’s products and services first.
Product Strategy of Bharti Infratel
Bharti Infratel explicitly deals with the provision of infrastructure to telecom companies as it follows the model of business-to-business (B2B) commerce and its portfolio is entirely based on dealing with other businesses.
This infrastructure is further used mostly by telecom firms to create networks regionally and accordingly provide connectivity and broadband services to the common man.
Bharti Infratel showcases its product and service portfolio with Tower, Power, and Space equipment. The following entails the product line:
- The necessary physical groundwork for connectivity and communication such as optic fibre cables, antennas, power stations to name a few.
- The most essential element for telecom companies which are towers and other necessary equipment with customizable blueprints.
- Providing consistent energy sources for the functioning of the groundwork infrastructure such as generators.
- Bharti Infratel also helps local bodies with local administrative infrastructures such as the installation of LED lights, CCTV cameras, Free Public WiFi connectivity, and Environment sensors, in various suburbs of Delhi Vadodara Bhopal, and Dehradun.
Services of Bharti Infratel
Bharti Infratel has built a service dedicated space for the provision of round-the-clock services to its consumers and landlords, under the name of NextGen Tower Operations Centre (TOC) which is the biggest operations center in the industry. Here the general operations and inquiry activities are mainly conducted:
- Round-the-clock, Bharti Infratel surveillance is carried out to ensure the proper functionality of their products, across the country.
- End-to-End tower management solutions, reliable tracking systems, and sustainable energy practices are feasible for the consumer, the company, and the environment as well, thereby giving a ‘Win-Win-Win’ situation.
- The TOC comes up with facilities that provide real-time analytics to the consumers 24/7 ensuring quality and consumer satisfaction
- The TOC takes landowners very seriously as their foundation and entirety is based upon their mercy and will, therefore they have a coherent partner convenience department, to handle their incoming complaints and grievances and assure guaranteed satisfactory follow-ups as well.
These products & services consequently help consumers as well as partners in resolving their issues and fulfills their respective needs and requirements through the finest quality and affordable pricing.
Price Strategy of Bharti Infratel
Bharti Infratel being a B2B company engages directly with other businesses, specifically telecom companies for undertaking infrastructural activities. They undergo certain long-term contracts where Bharti Infratel is outsourced to focus on the tower building and connectivity management wing for the telecom companies.
As tower infrastructure involves usage of heavy extensive materials and term bound services, the outlay of the same is set to be high-end. There is no pricing strategy as such for Bharti Infratel or any other B2B companies which deal directly with other businesses. This is because the value includes only costs of production and profits which Bharti Infratel opts to earn.
As the contracts are undisclosed documents, not much can be ascertained about the pricing structure for laying out infrastructure and charges for the provision of services.
Regardless, the entire foundation of Bharti Infratel depends on the required essentials being supplied to the consumers with the help of their partners.
Place Strategy of Bharti Infratel
Place mix involves the distribution of the product/service line to the consumers, on time with minimal hesitation.
Bharti Infratel gets in touch with landlords/property owners in suitable target locations for the installation of the infrastructural facilities for their consumers (telecom firms), on their land.
Here, the landlords are paid rents/ lump sums by the company for usage of space, ranging from Rs 5000 to Rs 1,00,000 monthly depending upon the scale of operations being carried out.
There are no mediators involved in the process therefore the service tends to be cost-effective to the telecom companies who avail purchases.
Bharti Infratel maintains a direct ‘producer to consumer relationship’, by having negligible channels in between and minimal overheads, thereby, providing convenience. Ensuring the best quality deliverance and quick responsiveness is what the staff at Bharti Infratel is known for, making what’s best for business in this market segment.
Promotion Strategy of Bharti Infratel
B2B Companies are not much in favour of heavy promotional activities, as their business is such that they deal with corporate parties only and the general public is not their target market. Here’s how Bharti Infratel makes its presence felt to the general public:
- A major portion of the promotion mix for Bharti Infratel comes from Publicity. Bharti Infratel often makes the headlines majorly because of its stock market performances.
- Publicity, therefore, assists in reaching out to the common man as well and thus making their presence felt among the general masses about Bharti Infratel.
As Bharti Infratel manages to keep performing well in its business, which reflects in its market price in the stock markets which ultimately becomes news in newspapers and web pages frequently.
People Strategy of Bharti Infratel
The reputation and position which Bharti Infratel currently holds in the market, all of its credit goes to the employees, the workers, and the executives behind it. In any organization, goals cannot be achieved without the required efficient personnel.
Bharti Infratel has an entire centre dedicated to handling consumer grievances, administration, HR, and the management under one roof, where the personnel ensures absolute quality deliverance.
The people of the company form the backbone of success and what Bharti Infratel is known for in the telecom industry today worldwide, wouldn’t have been possible without its workforce.
Now that we know about Bharti Infratel as a company in greater detail, let us now go through its marketing strategy.
Marketing Strategy of Bharti Infratel
Bharti Infratel is a business to business (B2B) entity and does not focus on marketing itself. It focuses to communicate business solutions and provide solutions to businesses of all size. It is a specialist in the provision of technology solutions for telecom companies.
However, the marketing strategy of Bharti Infratel includes a mix of social media marketing, regular press releases and a having a steady flow of news on the financial news channels relating to its stock prices.
Let us now see how it is doing itself on the digital aspects in the next section.
Digital Presence of Bharti Infratel
Similarly, Bharti Infratel does not have a wide base for carrying out promotional activities. Regardless, the telecom infrastructure dominator has a significant following base on platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook where they actively commend its partners, executives, and employees for displaying skills of excellence and achievements, the CSR initiatives, and well wishes during the festive season.
They also launched a hashtag that goes by #TowersAreGood, and celebrated the connectivity they managed to maintain and strengthen, during the tough times of the Covid-19 lockdown period.
Now that we have understood the important aspects of the company, Let us take a lot at how are Bharti Infratel’s competitors fare.
Competitors Analysis of Bharti Infratel
Various other tower infrastructure companies are providing similar services and products in the market segment. These services and products involve laying out wired, building towers, mapping regions for suitable connectivity, allocating resources according to budgets for infrastructure, providing network services, etc.
Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers were the most dominating corporates before the merger in the market, until both the companies merged in November 2020, thereby becoming the strongest dominant telecom market shareholder in unison. The same can be shown through the visuals below:
GTL Infrastructure LTD, MTNL, Tata Power, Reliance Infratel, Essar, and Welin to name a few. There are not many tower infrastructure companies in the market therefore oligopoly tends to prevail in such market segments.
The existence of an oligopoly in this market segment has led to heavy competition amongst the firms to capture a larger share of the market and emerge as the leaders of the industry.
Bharti Infratel, now Indus Towers, is known as the best in India and a potential market leader as it has the most extensive network of telecom operators in India and is also prominent in the market for its well-known quality standards when it comes to wireless service providers.
Here are a few suggestions that might help Bharti Infratel to improve its competitiveness in the market even more.
Suggestions
Here is precise scrutiny of Bharti Infratel by us, we have analyzed some aspects where Bharti Infratel needs improvement in terms of growth and performance. Focusing on these pointers could help the firm, switch gears considering its development and market share.
- Bharti Infratel needs a broader base for excelling in the digital spectrum, they so far have 2 platforms through which their efforts have succeeded in making felt. A few more platforms would be like a cherry on top for the company.
- Bharti Infratel needs to scale up its operations in terms of local requirements as well, which would give them variety in performing operations at all levels.
With this, our case study on Bharti Infratel comes to an end. Let us conclude the case study in the final section.
Conclusion
Bharti Infratel not having a large scale and actual ‘’consumer base’’, has managed to have a significant impact in the general market just because of its quality deliverance and segment experience. The merger with Indus Towers gave a major boost which brought in huge chunks of the much-needed market share in favour of Bharti Infratel making it the leading tower infrastructure company in India.
Not being able to capture much public attention, Bharti Infratel has managed to create significant impact through its core activities and CSR initiatives of uplifting the society, thereby making it a highly competitive space for humongous conglomerates like Tata and Reliance to monopolize this segment of market and veining their efforts to outreach Bharti Infratel.
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