Connect with us
Wednesday,25-December-2024
Breaking News

Business

Jio surpassed BSNL to become the country’s largest fixed broadband provider

Published

on

JioFiber added 0.19 million subscribers to become the number 1 operator in the fixed broadband segment in just about two years from commercial launch, with 4.34mn FBB subs.

JioFiber’s market share improved 85bp month on month to 16.9 per cent (launched commercially in Sep-19), Nomura said in a report.

Bharti added 0.1mn subs to reach 4.08mn FBB subs (up 68% since May-20), with market share up 60bp m-m to 15.9 per cent.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s (BSNL) market share further declined by 185 bp to 16.4 per cent share (vs 44 per cent pre-JioFiber launch in September’19), the report said.

Without significant fund-raising, Vodafone Idea’s network investments and 5G rollout would likely remain constrained, at least in the near term. Hence, we expect market share gains to continue for Bharti and R-Jio, the report said.

TRAI data for November shows a slight improvement in industry numbers, with Jio gaining market share at the expense of VIL, UBS said in a report.

After a large decline in September (driven by the 19mn subscriber loss reported by Jio) and flattish numbers in October, the industry witnessed a slight improvement in November, with overall subscriber base expanding by 1.2mn. Bharti gained 1.3mn subs (-0.5mn in Oct), Jio added 2mn subs (+1.8mn in Oct), while VIL continued to lose market share: it lost 1.9mn subs (versus loss of 1mn and 1.1mn in Oct and Sept respectively).

Jio remains the market leader, with a subscriber market share (SMS) of 36.7 per cent (+10bps). Bharti and VIL ended Nov with SMS of 30.4 per cent (flat MoM) and 22.9 per cent (down 20bps) respectively. It is important to note that the tariff hikes were largely applicable from end-November / December, and therefore, December is likely to see some churn, UBS said.

In fixed broadband, Jio surpassed BSNL to become the country’s largest FBB provider. Jio now has 4.3mn FBB subs (+0.2mn in Nov), followed by BSNL with 4.2mn subs (-0.5mn in Nov) and Airtel with 4.1mn subs (+0.1mn in Nov).

Business

Indian telecom industry’s revenue doubled in 5 years, Bharti Airtel biggest gainer

Published

on

New Delhi, Dec 25: The revenue of India’s telecom industry increased 8 per cent (quarter-on-quarter) to Rs 674 billion (13 per cent growth year-on-year) in the second quarter of FY25, mainly driven by tariff hikes, according to a new report.

Driven by three rounds of smartphone tariff hikes, India’s quarterly telecom revenue has almost doubled (up 96 per cent) since September 2019, implying 14 per cent five-year industry revenue CAGR, according to the report by Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd.

Given the consolidated market structure in the Indian telecom industry, higher data consumption, lower ARPU, and inadequate returns generated by telcos, “we expect tariff hikes to be more frequent. We build in 15 per cent tariff hike in December 2025.”

The telecom industry’s average revenue per unit (ARPU) has almost doubled from Rs 98 in September 2019 to Rs 193 in September 2024, driven by tariff hikes.

However, as a result of sharp tariff hikes, the industry’s subscriber base at 1.15 trillion in September 2024 is lower than September 2019 levels (1.17 trillion).

Among telcos, Bharti Airtel has been the biggest beneficiary of tariff hikes with a 2.2 times increase in implied ARPU, registering a 17 per cent five-year CAGR.

“We believe the significant improvement in the data subs proportion has also been a key driver for Bharti’s industry-leading ARPU,” said the report.

Over the reporting period from 2019-2024, Bharti’s revenue has increased 2.6 times, implying 21 per cent five-year revenue CAGR, with incremental revenue market share significantly higher at 48 per cent.

“With Vi’s (Vodafone Idea) large capex plans, we believe the pace of market share gains may slow down. However, RJio and Bharti are still likely to continue gaining market share at Vi’s expense, in our view,” the report noted.

Continue Reading

Business

AI to generate new revenue streams in 2025, innovate business processes: Experts

Published

on

New Delhi, Dec 25: Enterprises will reimagine business processes and value streams with AI agents in 2025, while taking into consideration the practical and ethical challenges, industry experts have said, adding that it will be the year of small language models, scaled reasoning and business value realisation.

In the coming year, AI agents will generate new revenue streams, innovate business processes across industries, boosting profitability, operational efficiency, and customer experience.

“Humans will increasingly take on roles where they set up agentic teams, plan agentic workflows, and validate work done by AI Agents,” said Sandhya Arun, Chief Technology Officer, Wipro.

According to Mohammed Rafee Tarafdar, CTO of Infosys, in 2025, we will see a lot of AI initiatives that are currently under rollout, to be scaled across enterprises, and businesses will start realising some measurable business value along the lines of cost, growth, better experience, and risk protection.

“We are seeing increased investments in scaling inferencing which improves the reasoning capabilities, thereby enabling the agentic systems to be used to eliminate tasks and re-engineer the processes,” Tarafdar mentioned.

As the small language models become more specialised and can deliver higher accuracy at lower cost, the adoption of these models in enterprises is likely to accelerate.

Prativa Mohapatra, Vice President and Managing Director, Adobe India, said that fuelled by a healthy enterprise business, vibrant creator community, and upcoming technological advancements, 2025 represents a year of extraordinary opportunity.

“We are committed to leading the way in harnessing generative AI’s potential responsibly and empower businesses and creators alike, setting new benchmarks in personalised customer experiences and content creation while upholding trust and transparency through our content authenticity programmes,” she noted.

The idea of software-defined capabilities, which originated with cloud technology, has now evolved across various machines like vehicles and robots.

“In 2025, software defined machines will be powered by AI and ML and make informed decisions. We will witness an increase in autonomous machines with over-the-air (OTA) updates,” added Arun.

Autonomous industrial robots will proliferate, and software-defined medical devices will evolve towards autonomous preventive maintenance and self-healing with minimal human intervention and down time.

Augmented analytics will enable citizen users to gain access to intelligent insights from ready-to-use data visualisations for faster and informed decision making. Data marketplaces will grow across industries and industry ecosystems to unlock new revenue streams, said experts.

Continue Reading

Business

Indian firms raise bumper funds from equity market in 2024, set new records

Published

on

Mumbai, Dec 24: The year 2024 has been a historic one for the Indian stock market. Corporates raised bumper funds from investors through initial public offerings (IPOs), follow-on public offers (FPOs), qualified institutional placements (QIPs) and rights issues, and set several new records.

In 2024, domestic companies raised Rs 1.64 lakh crore through 90 IPOs.

During this period, shares worth Rs 1.39 lakh crore were sold to institutional investors. This is the highest figure ever for raising capital through public issues.

In 2021, companies raised the highest amount of Rs 1.18 lakh crore through IPOs. During this period, shares worth Rs 41,997 crore were sold by the companies to institutional investors.

So far this year, 20 companies have raised about Rs 18,000 crore through rights issues. Last year this figure was Rs 7,266 crore, and in 2022, it was Rs 3,884 crore.

Due to the boom in the IPO market, in December 2024, about 15 companies are going to raise Rs 25,500 crore through public issues.

The biggest-ever IPO of the Indian stock market was launched by Hyundai Motor India. Its issue size was Rs 27,870 crore.

Earlier, LIC’s public issue of Rs 21,008 crore in 2022 was the biggest IPO in the country so far. In 2024, Vibhor Steel Tube’s IPO received the highest subscription of 320 times. Apart from this, IPOs like KRN Heat Exchanger & Refrigeration, Manba Finance, and Gala Precision Engineering got more than 200 times subscriptions.

Indian firms raised Rs 1.4 lakh crore this year through QIPs, the highest figure so far since 2020.

This year, Vedanta and Zomato have each raised Rs 8,500 crore through QIP. Apart from this, Adani Energy Solutions and Varun Beverage raised Rs 8,373 crore and Rs 7,500 crore, respectively. According to data from the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL), foreign investors invested around $14 billion in the primary markets this year, which is more than the previous record of 2021.

Continue Reading

Trending