Change is for real
Jun 01
The Telecom industry for sure is a fast moving industry! Today Uninor launched its GSM service in Mumbai, the most populous city of India at 14 million people. In the days to come we are launching in four more areas, increasing the population footprint of Uninor by 250 million people to a total reach of 900 million Indians. Almost 10% of the world population now has the choice to call with Uninor. Truly amazing.
My task
Not only the business itself is fast moving, my tasks have quickly changed from one thing to another. In my last post I said I would describe what I’m doing at Uninor. Since then, my tasks have changed completely. I came to Uninor in Bangalore to prepare the launch of Postpaid in Karnataka, the southwest Indian state with 60 million people. Postpaid is simply mobile subscriptions were you pay post your usage on a monthly basis, in contrast to Prepaid, which is what 95% of Indians are using and it is the Uninor product as of now. However the introduction of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) became much more urgent, with a pan-India launch of MNP on July 1. Therefore three weeks ago I was assigned to be the project manager and the marketing responsible for the MNP launch in Uninor Karnataka.
Mobile Number Portability
MNP is a great service; it simply enables customers to switch from one mobile operator to another meanwhile keeping their mobile number. This service has been in available in Sweden and most of Europe for the last 5 to 10 years and in India its implementation has been underway for more than four years, finally though MNP is supposed to launch in just four weeks. The complexity of the overall project is huge since all operators, more than 15 operators pan-India, must be ready to offer MNP for all customers, a total of over 500 million, all at once. My responsibility to is to device a market strategy for Karnataka, to maximize the opportunity that MNP is to a new operator as Uninor. The strategy itself is secret as of now, but the project involves so much more. My responsibility also covers sales processes, the sales organization itself, the customer service organization as well as all our IT systems, which all need to support MNP. The best part of the project is the fact that I will be part of both laying down the strategy, doing the planning and implementing the MNP service in our organization. And now there are only four weeks till launch.
Picture time
That’s short on what I spend my time at work on, to better describe my experience of India so far; I thought I would share some pictures. These are both from work and from my weekend trips.
Market and store visit to one of the exclusive Uninor stores in Davangere, five hours north of Bangalore.
Launching of Dynamic Pricing, a prepaid product with constantly changing discount dependent on place and time.
Inauguration of the new office, we are moving there on Friday.
Sightseeing with Gabriella in Delhi; here India Gate and an auto-rickshaw. (No we are not in Paris, even though India Gate looks much like the Arc de Triomphe)
Sightseeing in Agra; Taj Mahal and the Agra fort. It’s amazing to think that Taj Mahal was built by 20,000 people for 22 years.
That’s all for now! More on India next time.
RB
Jun 07, 2010 @ 22:23:07
Thanks Erik, looking forward to reading more about your work in India.
Erik Irestal
Jun 04, 2010 @ 10:18:27
Thanks!
In my current position I report to the CEO (also known as the Executive Vice President, http://www.uninor.in/discoverus/pages/keypeople.aspx) of the Uninor Karnataka/Bangalore Hub. Essentially Uninor in India is divided into 11 hubs which eventually will cover all of India with our GSM service and Karnataka, an Indian state, is one of them. The Hub CEO is the responsible for everything at the hub level and run the hub together with a management team.
The change of assignment was worked out on a per business need basis, at the present time it made more sense to focus on MNP rather than Postpaid, hence as a trainee you have to be very flexible. To me it’s all about making the most of every opportunity and by changing assignments I get to see and take part in a greater part of the business happening here in Bangalore.
RB
Jun 04, 2010 @ 09:37:42
Interesting post + nice pics! Who do you report to? How does it work when you all of a sudden get a new assignment, can you describe the process a little?