Airtel Black to Cater to High Paying Postpaid Subscribers The strategy would be aimed at the launch of Airtel Black which will provide services like lounge access, better content offerings, discounts on consumer brands, international roaming, health insurance and bundled apps and streaming services, for people who are ready to pay more than Rs 999 per month. As the figure suggests, the move would be targeted at high paying customers. The telecom operator has already clarified its stance that it would be letting go of low paying customers, something that it has already done with the introduction of minimum recharge plans. However, this new move will also lead to a similar outcome. Now Airtel is ready to focus on high paying customers. The low-paying customers might be of interest to Reliance Jio, which currently has a target of hitting 500 million subscribers. Airtel Black to be Under Airtel Thanks Programme Notably, Airtel Thanks is a reward system for consumers set up by Airtel, and this new introduction will also be brought under Airtel Thanks only. The aim of Bharti Airtel with this would be to push users on lower-paying plans already on Airtel Thanks to go for Airtel Black. This would also increase the postpaid business of the telecom operator and would drive more high paying consumers towards Airtel Black. This new move is also expected to improve consumer retention with Airtel. Currently, Airtel has different tiers within the Airtel Thanks programme. For example, Airtel Thanks currently has a Gold tier which ships benefits to the postpaid customers who are spending less than Rs 499 per month. The Platinum tier of Airtel Thanks offers benefits to the customers who are on plans priced Rs 500 and above. Airtel Postpaid Consumer Driving Heavy Revenue for Company Airtel’s CEO Gopal Vittal had already hinted about the launch of a new postpaid related service. Also, the launch of Reliance JioFiber which the telecom operator will be shipping in combination with its postpaid plans has also urged Airtel to bring this into play. Another reason why postpaid is so important to Airtel is because, around 4-5% of consumers from postpaid, make up for approximately 20% of the total revenue for the telcos as per analysts. Bharti Airtel currently has 281.3 million subscribers and boasts of an average revenue per user (ARPU) of Rs 129 which is higher than Reliance Jio’s figure of Rs 122 and Vodafone Idea’s ARPU of Rs 108.
