“Tata” is an abbreviation for “bye bye”. True to their name, Tata’s have been left behind and all others are cheering “Tata tata”!
They surely know how to put up a brave face despite heavy odds. They are lagging behind absolute customer acquistion, embroiled in court battle with BSNL over payment of the access deficit charge; their national long distance calling licence isn’t fetching them any returns and finally, VSNL’s monopoly is severely under threat from existing players.
Their corporate heads are screaming about pulling themselves out of the morass and their graves that they happily dug for themselves. Customers are getting frustrated and network congestion and downtime is slowly eroding their worth. Oh well, that reminds me, they were happy to partner with other players for their networks!
Finally, their own GSM partner (Idea) competes with their CDMA network. Wow! A paradox of all sorts.
There is a word of advice for them. Leverage your existing skills. Instead of reaching out to the corporates, make sure to retain your existing customers. Tata’s have moved their group companies to hook up on to VSNL broadband and as usual there was corporate gibberish to fool the readers about “leveraging” the cost benefit. Fact is that they need infusion of funds to keep them afloat.
Tata’s are like a terminally ill patient who is kept on a life support- their major circles are running in losses and its proving to be a drain on their resources.
I d suggest them to get active on the broadband and branch out to untapped cities. They did tie up with AMD to provide computers on loans- instead of chasing the corporate pie for which Reliance has been able to beat them black and hollow.
BSNL’s broadband is in pits and Reliance are sitting back and twiddling their thumbs. Airtel has all the wrong advisors ( read- the MBA’s ) to screw themselves up and commit professional harakiri.
Once of course, Reliance jumps in the fray, going on their past record, they would soon wire up the entire country.
It would be then Tata tata for good.