Aircel Launches Youth Plan
Aircel (the 4th player in the telecom game, after Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, with majority presence in South India) recently launched a Youth Plan…before, I go into the package details, think about it for a moment. Which is the segment that’s extremely price sensitive, could be a first time customer and does not really care about the quality of calls or signal availability? - The Youth Community - they want more SMS, more local calls, call groups at cheap rates and more at the lowest possible price. So, here comes Airtel with their “Youth Plan” delivering a package of 4500 free SMS, local call groups at 20p/min and more…at Rs. 150.
How does this help? Well, one of the new joinees in my group recently opted to go with Tata Docomo and not only that it is impossible to reach him, the call gets abruptly dropped several times while the conversation is going on and I’m told that the line is busy! But, he has no complaints, he doesn’t pay for anything more than he talks (by the second). Now, Aircel (which is likely to be most threatened of its position by the new entrant) with its youth plan is taking Tata Docomo head on in its very (possible) target market.
PS: I had mistakenly heard this advertisement to be for Airtel and hence written my post accordingly. I have corrected my mistake and redone my thoughts to account for the fact that it was actually launched by Aircel and not Airtel. Alas, what is in a name, huh!
