The Hindu Business Line : Hutch on a hi

Chennai, which has not really caught up with the other metros in terms of cell-phone use, is a challenge to Hutch, which is going all out to promote its brand and grow the market.

A perennial greeting, it strikes you everywhere in Chennai. The faces change but they're essentially the same - all of them, young and younger, want to introduce you to Hutch, the latest cellular service provider in town. A cheery Hi and the company's logo is all there is and that's what the faces of Hutch endeavour to do - bring across the company's philosophy of making things simple for the consumer.

According to Rajiv Sawhney, CEO, Chennai & Karnataka Circle, Hutchison Essar, market research showed that people were extremely confused about cell-phone services. It was complex; technology, terminology and products were "thrown" at them and simplicity became a crying need. And this is the plank Hutch, Hutchison Essar's new unified brand for cellular services across Chennai, Karnataka, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh, seeks to occupy in making inroads into the consumer's mind. "People were required to be PhDs in telecommunication to understand all that the cellular companies were saying - multiple rentals, multiple rates, night rates, day rates, 60-second pulse for the first minute, 15-second pulse the second minute ... we thought we'd be simple not only in our communication but also in the way we went about our business," explains Sawhney.

Chennai, says Sawhney, is underperforming as a market for cellular services. The city stands next only to Delhi and Mumbai "in most other parameters" but when it comes to cellular services, it is beaten by all the metros as well as Hyderabad and Bangalore. For instance, there were 10,000 new consumers in June from Chennai while Kolkata saw 17,000 new users. "The perception about the category was unclear." Hence, the blitzkrieg - teaser ads both outdoors and in print, hoardings swamping the city at every turn (65,000 sq. ft. of them), HIs scrolling down the walls of Spencer Plaza (with two more buildings in for the same treatment), full page ads in the same pages day after day in the leading dailies - the emphasis is on creating an impact which Chennai's not felt before.

Sawhney describes his tariff plan as a rubber band which expands to suit existing needs. All Hutch post-paid customers in Chennai will be charged on one single tariff plan called the Talk Flexi tariff plan. This tariff plan has a rental of Rs 275 per month which is as low as that of a land line connection. The airtime rates for incoming as well as outgoing calls are the same and will depend on the airtime minutes used by a customer in a month. The more airtime a customer uses, the lower will be the applicable tariff plan rate. Consumers do not have to decide which tariff plan to enrol for. "An extremely simple plan, Talk Flexi offers the customers affordability, openness and simplicity," says Sawhney. There will be a single tariff rate for incoming and outgoing calls for pre-paid customers.

However, competition sees this as offering the customer little choice. "One plan is not giving the customer much choice," says P. H. Rao, Managing Director, Bharti Mobinet, which operates Airtel cellular services in Chennai, while Arun Sikka, Vice-President, (Marketing and Sales), RPG Cellular, says there's the matter of the fine print. "It's not very exciting from the customer's point of view; it might work out quite expensive," he says. Adding that Hutch is already offering other plans which are similar to those of the incumbent operators, he says all three providers are on the same wicket and consumers will find out sooner or later which plan is really consumer-friendly. Sawhney counters that if a certain customer is willing to switch to Hutch but wants a plan he is already comfortable with, why shouldn't Hutch give him one?

Airtel's Rao concedes the simplicity argument to an extent but points out that existing operators have simplified their plans and communication compared to what they were even two years ago. "It's not as if we're offering 20 plans today, but even with three plans, there's a good choice." About Hutch's ad campaign, he says, "The business cannot be sustained at this level of advertising, which cannot go beyond 30-60 days."

Airtel, on its part, is increasing its below-the-line activity - at dealer outlets, on scooter covers, covering the length of Anna Salai, Chennai's main artery, with median boards featuring actor Madhavan and Kareena Kapoor, the brand ambassadors, revamping its communication to reflect its new logo and communicating with the existing subscriber base, which, Rao says, is an edge his company has over Hutch which is yet to begin from scratch.

Hutch believes Chennai holds immense potential. As of now, the city occupies a distant sixth place in cellular usage, with 2.86 lakh consumers. With more operators now, the market will very likely expand to five lakh users by June next, Sawhney predicts. Hutch has sunk in about Rs 400 crore already into infrastructure and licence fees in the first phase itself, and with 110 sites in place and 15 more likely to come up in a month, its reach would be fairly comprehensive, he adds.

Hutch claims other firsts besides its single-tariff plans. Value-added services will be offered on trial before customers are charged for it, another service being offered for the first time in the country. This offer covers a range of value-added services such as VOX voice command information service, unified messaging service, VoiceXpress voice messaging service, Yahoo Messenger on SMS, global text messaging in Tamil and a range of information services. Hutch also offers 100 roaming relationships and voice mail to both post-paid and pre-paid customers.

As for the ad campaign itself, Sawhney says there is some customisation based on the region. For instance, the faces of Hutch in Bangalore are more Channel V, MTV, IT professional-like, more funky, different from those in Chennai.

"The market has evolved and there's no need to say a lot, Hi will do," says Sawhney of the minimalistic introduction. (He admits, however, that they will have to think of something for non-readers of newspapers who don't realise what Hutch is.) And this is only the first phase of the campaign. Is there more focus on Chennai than on other circles? Considering that the Chennai market "underperforms", Sawhney says Hutch will do what it takes to achieve its goal. And if that means more advertising, better distribution, more aggression, so be it.

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