Responding to Reliance Jio’s free calls and data offer, Bharti Airtel’s CEO Gopal Vittal said that “we don't believe that competing very aggressively in pricing with something that is free is actually a response,” while talking to analysts during the company’s Q2 2016 conference call. He added that Jio’s free offer has put some “softness” on Airtel’s data growth in the quarter, and this softening of data growth shall continue for some time. However, Vittal added that Airtel would be able to maintain its top market share for the next one year or one-and a-half year. Postpaid users jumping for better deals Airtel has witnessed few subscribers leaving its postpaid side. Vittal said that these customers are “more the deal hunters, value seekers…young people, traders and things like that who are switching.” But he maintains that “This is a game we (Airtel) know how to play.” “We've seen competitors like Telenor operating at half the price of us, Aircel and so on, and I think we have owned this game over the period of the last few years to understand how to individually segment at a customer level to see what kind of a pricing we need to do without spending contingent all around the place,” Vittal mentioned during the call Vittal predicts that Jio could add close to 40 million connections by end of December with their current rate of subscriber growth, while pointing out that there could be a slowdown “because of the sheer absolute number of…
