Vodafone Idea partners with firms to add non-core revenues

With the aim of increasing the share of non-telecom revenues, cash-strapped Vodafone Idea on Friday partnered with edtech and wellness companies, including upGrad, Udemy, cure.fit and 1mg, to provide exclusive offers from these firms to its subscribers.

“We’re fundamentally looking at non-telco revenue streams through partnerships becoming a strong source of revenue for us,” said Avneesh Khosla, director - Marketing. “It is going to be a meaningful revenue stream as we move forward. The organisation is putting its weight and might behind this... we definitely see this scaling up fairly aggressively,” he added.

‘4G push’

The move would also additionally help drive core telecom business revenue through higher engagement and by incentivising subscribers to upgrade to 4G from 2G, Mr. Khosla said.

“The partnerships are essentially targeted to a smartphone consumer, aged 18-45 years old and not necessarily only urban,” he said. “While there will be a larger resonance in urban, we have started to see a fair amount of interest even as far as rural is concerned. I don’t think rural is going to be a distant second,” Mr. Khosla added.

Vodafone Idea would be announcing more such partnerships in the near future, the director said.