Seven hundred million and counting … I am not talking about the population of any country. Nor am I talking about the revenue of any enterprise. What is it then? This is the total number of telecom subscribers in India - growing at a whopping 20-25 percent year-on-year. These numbers don't include passive subscribers.

Wondering what it is that I am trying to prove? The whole world knows about India’s telecom story. That is the reason why every big international telecom operator wants a pie of this business. But it is not easy. The incumbents have deep pockets to rattle any new player.

There are a few pertinent questions these new telecom players have to answer before they enter this overcrowded space. What should they do for survival? What could be the winning formula for them? How can they create a differentiation in the market where the main source of revenue, voice, is almost free?

I also posed some of these questions to Avinash Mittal who decided to quit an established incumbent to join Uninor as VP, IT, Networks and Value-Added Services. Uninor is a fairly new operator, and according to some media reports, the parent company even faced pressure from investors to pull out of India to cut losses.

Surprisingly my questions didn’t deter Avinash from giving me good answers. First, he said that Uninor offers only pre-paid connections, which eliminates a lot of operational hazards and expenditure from the system. Apart from that, the company deals with the demand and supply in a unique way. Despite having a conventional route to the market, Uninor connects with its retailers directly, and unlike other service providers, this operator does it in real-time. This helps in two ways: One, the demand-supply gap is always under control. Two, the operator is able to incentivise its retailer appropriately to create greater loyalty. IT has made all this possible.

These rather small innovations have resulted in decent gains for Uninor. In a short span of time, they have been able to gain good traction in this already crowded space.

“We can’t win customers otherwise. Innovation is the only way to thrive,” says Mittal and accurately so. If there is one game-changing formula, it is innovation. If you can master it, business will follow.

If you have any winning formula, we will be glad to discuss. As always, I welcome your feedback.

rahul.mani@9dot9.in