Telecom Lead Asia: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Jio Infocomm will take lessons from the success of Maxis in the mobile data business by hiring Sandip Das as its new CEO.
However, Maxis, Malaysia’s #1 telecom operator, is yet to generate regular revenue streams from 4G — a strong focus area for Reliance Jio when it launches TD-LTE services in Delhi and Mumbai in the middle of 2013.
In fact, the world does not have too many CEOs who have experienced successful revenue models from 4G. Bharti Airtel’s CEO Sanjay Kapoor, who will be leaving the company soon, generated $20 ARPU from 4G, but the company has only around 20,000 users.
In the 4G world of Reliance Jio Infocomm, Das needs to continue his smart deals with smartphone and other vendors. Reliance Industries is already talking to Samsung to source 4G smartphones for $100.
“Sourcing is a “specialized project” at Reliance. Das may need to learn from RIL to master the art of negotiations,” said a top official with a telecom vendor.
Korean devices major Samsung will be handling a substantial part of the TD-LTE network rollouts, piping several equipment vendors like Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE, Huawei, etc. But most of the 4G rollouts in India will happen in 2014-15 only.
At Maxis, Sandip Das, who joined the group in January 2007 and leaving in April 2013 to join Reliance Jio Infocomm, is credited with the successful IPO raising RM11.2 billion.
Maxis has pioneered and led the Malaysian market in providing innovative and meaningful mobile products and services.
Maxis was the first telecom service provider to bring the BlackBerry and Apple iPhone smart phones to Malaysia.
In addition, Maxis is a top regional content player; actively builds a local content ecosystem to forward the Malaysian content industry. Das’ experience in bringing new life to mobile VAS industry in Malaysia will be a value addition to Reliance Jio that is building 4G content through a series of acquisitions.
However, Das could not translate Aircel’s huge investment in 3G and BWA spectrum in India. Aircel is yet to launch 4G in India. Currently, the company is going through tough phase with reducing exposure in select Indian towns.
Sandip Das’ main contribution will be his sharing of experience from telecom markets in India, Malaysia and Indonesia — three emerging mobile data markets.
However, Reliance Jio Infocomm’s investment plans are huge (at around $10 billion) compared with Maxis’ Capex of RM803 million in 2012. Plus, Sandip Das needs to work with Mukesh Ambani and team who are not well known for accepting failures in business.
Reliance Jio is already facing several challenges in rolling out the much hyped 4G services after buying BWA spectrum in 2010.
Das’ experience at Maxis — that continued digital content enrichment with online books, cloud computing for enterprise, cloud storage for consumer (Loker), MHealth, and customised Maxis content — will be handy for Reliance Jio.
Also, Maxis is far ahead than some of the Indian telecom operators.
Deployment of low-cost Nanocell and Femtocell for coverage expansion in rural areas and network sharing with U Mobile on 2G and 3G with option to extend to LTE — are some of the examples.
In Q4 2012, non-voice business contributed 46.2 percent of mobile revenue to Maxis, of which Mobile internet / VAS 21.0 percent; SMS 15.7 percent; WBB 6.0 percent and Devices 3.5 percent. In addition, Internet & data services (non-SMS) dominant at 66 percent of Q4 non-voice revenue.
The coming months will determine how Sandips Das will fit into the much sought after position at Reliance Jio Infocomm.
Interestingly, Reliance Communications, promoted by Mukesh Ambani’s brother Anil Ambani, hired Gurdeep Singh from Aircel in a bid to revive its wireless business. Both Gurdeep and Sandip spent considerable time at Vodafone India, one of the most successful telecom ventures in India.
Baburajan K
[email protected]
