Future Group enters mobile market in partnership with Tata Teleservices
Penetrating the competitive Indian mobile market is tough, telcos try to woo customers with offers on connections. Tata Teleserices (TTSL) and one of India’s largest retailer – Future Group have announced a new GSM brand called T24. Future Group owns brands like Pantaloons (clothing), Big Bazaar (every day items like groceries) which are independent retail outlets. According to Future Group, they have over 1,000 stores in 73 cities and 65 rural areas across India. Tata Teleservices and Future Group partnership allows them to offer talk time on the amount customers spend at the retail outlets.
According to TTSL MD, Anil Sardana T24 stands for Talk 24. The brand tagline is “Talk more. Shop more.” At launch, T24 is restricted to Gujrat where Future Group has 23 stores in 7 towns with 2 more stores expected in the next 6 months. To get an idea of the offers:
- Shopping worth Rs. 2,501 at Pantaloons = 50 minutes free talk time.
- Shopping worth Rs 1,501 at Big Bazaar = 90 minutes of free talk-time.
T24 connections will be offered exclusively at Future Group outlets.
Tata Teleservices already has a GSM brand called Tata DoCoMo. Why would a company introduce another brand that essentially uses the same infrastructure? As I see this, it isn’t Tata Teleservices launching another brand but more like Future Group entering the mobile market. The costs to deploy infrastructure for a new service is exorbitant not to mention the complexities given the market circumstances. This is a strategic partnership for both companies with Tata providing infrastructure and Future Group leveraging their outreach to gain customers.
Announcement from Tata Teleservices can be viewed here (PDF).