"The fact is that only 20 percent of our customers contribute to 80 percent of the business," Airtel India and South Asia MD and CEO Gopal Vittal said on Tuesday on the company's earnings call. "So there is a massive opportunity to go wide in order to grow our share to tap into the 80 percent. There's also a big opportunity to go deep with the 20 percent to gain a higher share of volume," he added. While Airtel's earnings have been less spectacular than expected this quarter, the company has managed to post a net profit for two quarters in a row, a feat that took years after Jio's disruptive entry in 2016. The company said 12% of its workforce was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic's second wave, a number Vittal said was 5 times higher than it was in the first wave. Hunting and farming: Vittal drew a hunting and farming parallel to describe revenues from high- and low-income subscribers; high revenue subscribers come under "hunting," as they are few in number, and lower-income subscribers come under "farming," as they are the majority of the user base. SME onboarding now in-house: "We're in-sourcing our entire [Small and Medium Enterprises] sales force, which was earlier outsourced. This will lead to upgradation of our SME channel capabilities, helping us gain share." Vittal added that the company was also building "omnichannel digital capabilities" in SME, and that in the product lines where this was started, 95% of products ordered were bought through…
