GP aims to digitise people's lives
Grameenpone has taken initiatives to “digitise people's lives” and help them address their day-to-day challenges, Chief Executive Officer Rajeev Sethi said.
“We want to solve real life problems and make the digital life more meaningful for people across the society,” he said in an interview with The Daily Star last week.
“As a digital service provider, we have the responsibility to take Bangladesh to a digital age.”
The first phase of internet use came for the social media, especially Facebook, but now things are moving beyond the social media, he said.
Grameenphone has fixed three priority areas to serve their customers -- health, education and agriculture.
It has already completed a pilot project on health services that will be launched in the first quarter of next year; the operator started work on another pilot project on education that is planned for launch early next year.
Sethi said Grameenphone has covered an impressive 70 percent of their customers with 3G network, and this coverage will be 90 percent by next quarter. It currently has more than 5,500 sites that are running the 3G network.
Sethi, who joined Grameenphone as its CEO in December last year, was the chief marketing officer for Telenor's Indian subsidiary Uninor. Telenor is the major shareholder of Grameenphone with 55.8 percent shares.
Grameenphone serves 28.18 percent of the country's total internet users -- 5.5 crore, and has the ability to better the quality of lives of these people, he said.
The operator currently has 1.55 crore active internet users and each customer uses 308 MB data an average a month, which was only 60 MB in 2013, just prior to launching 3G.
“We are on the way to revolutionise data use.”
Data usage is growing at a good rate; people use the internet for many tasks in their day-to-day lives, he said. “You will find some examples around us, like a carpenter sharing a photo of his work to customers to get orders using the internet.”
Sethi said 20 percent of their subscribers use smartphones and the number is growing every day, which will help make people's lives easier.
The market leader recently launched a platform for ICT start-ups -- GP Accelerator -- where they will provide capital of even more than Tk 10 lakh to a person who can give unique solutions to different problems.
GP Accelerator is a platform for digital start-ups to find a foothold in the ICT industry and explore their ideas freely. Under the terms of the agreement, there will be two four-month sessions, with the first one starting in February 2016. The second session is scheduled for launch in August 2016. In every session, Grameenphone will select five ideas.
“We will identify the entrepreneurs who have good ideas to come on board to share their thoughts and we will give them seed capital. We will give them space within GP House, will mentor them and coach them with our senior executives,” Sethi said.
“After the four-month session, we will arrange a Demo Day where we will invite investors from across the globe. The chosen developers can demonstrate their products and ideas to find potential investors.”
Through this process, Grameenphone will also have access to fresh blood who can bring digital services to the customers, Sethi said.
On their network standards, he said, “As per global and local regulations, call-drop below 3 percent is tolerable. At Grameenphone, even during peak hours, we have an average call-drop rate of below 1 percent for both 2G and 3G networks. For 3G services, the rate is around 0.33 percent.”
All tariff plans of Grameenphone are designed with a maximum of ten second pulses. “So, customers pay according to their call duration.”
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