Chris Tobit

It is "logical" for Bharti Airtel to make a move to enter the low mobile penetrated market of Bangladesh.
"I call it logical as Bangladesh's present mobile penetration is under 40 percent, which clearly means there is headroom to grow," says Chris Tobit, managing director and chief executive officer for Bharti Airtel's Bangladeshi operations.
Drawing from his knowledge of India's telecom market, he differs on the notion that six operators are crowding the market here. In India, more than 10 operators are running operations in the same demographic characteristics.
In an interview with The Daily Star, Tobit aims to make the brand in Bangladesh an "optimal cost producer" of airtime minutes. "We are always trying to value our customers."
After acquiring a 70 percent stake in Warid Telecom, the Abu Dhabi Group's mobile operations in Bangladesh, the Indian telecom giant is now getting ready to launch its services in Bangladesh.
Without revealing all that Bharti is about to introduce to Bangladesh, Tobit says: "Once a customer experiences the Airtel network quality and its value added services, I believe a lot of customers will move from their existing network to us."
The untapped rural areas and tech-savvy youth are the major target groups for the Indian airtime producer.
Bharti's focus to capitalise on the untapped rural market seems slightly offbeat from the workings of Bangladesh market dominated by urban customers. As most telecom operators have already showed their unwillingness to go to rural areas, assuming 'no business returns', Bharti is not ready to go with the divide.
"Every customer is valuable to us," Tobit says. "Our cost model is all about leveraging economies of scale."
Bharti has 121.71 million mobile customers in India, of which, more than 60 percent come from the rural areas.
"The rural parts of India have some disposal income and they surprised us with their ability to adopt telecom product and give us good returns," says Tobit.
The three top players -- Grameenphone, Banglalink and Aktel -- are dominating the six-operator Bangladesh mobile market with more than 90 percent share. Just after Bharti's official debut in Bangladesh, the three operators tied up for infrastructure sharing to expand their network to the rural areas at low costs.
With a seven percent market share, Bharti is set to compete with the giants. Tobit says his company will not focus on the challenges. "We focus on opportunities."
The telecom market in Bangladesh has so many advantages. The median age of the population of the country is about 23 years. The youth will be the focus segment for Airtel in Bangladesh.
Tobit indicates at price and service segmentation for different customer levels.
"What will work for the urban youth will be very different from what will work for the rural farmers," says the Airtel chief in Bangladesh.
Bharti's marketing strategy in Sri Lanka to acquire customers at lower tariff already made other operators contemplate another price war in the market.
"Our efforts as an organisation are on reducing cost per minute at a scale that we can pass benefits to customers."
Because of an extremely effective business model and Bharti's ability to manage costs allows the company to provide value at affordable costs to the customers, he says.
"We are a financially strong company and money for initial investment is already available in Bangladesh."
However, he says Bharti is not a price leader in any market and rather, it focuses on value. "So we like to see ourselves as an optimal cost producer of airtime minutes and certainly we are always trying to value our customers."
On the possible timeframe to commercially launch Airtel in Bangladesh, Tobit says: "We are now only focusing on network expansion, product innovation and market research to find out the needs of customers."
In efforts to launch extraordinary services in Bangladesh, Tobit says, "We are not here to focus on urban Bangladesh alone. We are here to bring life changing products."
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