Airtel seeks partners in multiple Indian cities

Airtel, is looking to expand its partner network, especially in the identified industrial clusters (by government of India) of Delhi/NCR, Surat-Baroda, Mumbai-Pune, Bangalore-Chennai-Trivandrum and Kolkata. Airtel follows franchise model for the telecom sector for both walk-in and walk-out business models.

Walk-in models include retail stores, temporary service camps, Airtel experience outlets and channel partner owned stores. Walk out model has account managers for key eight cities identified by the brand and channel partners in tier II and III cities.

Sharing a word on the opportunities galore for investors in other cities, Ashish Arora, CEO, Corporate Business, Airtel told TFW Bureau, “Uttar Pradesh is another market which is very critical for us as it has the largest growing business base. We look to expand there as well. Last fiscal, we increased our channel partner base by 2x and this year too we are looking at a minimum 1.5x  increase. Any business wanting to become an airtel corporate business partner needs to only invest a few resources for backend support, front end sale executives and have a dedicated office space. Training and enablement will be taken care of by Airtel.”

In 2014, Airtel Corporate Business saw double digit growth and had a healthy account base of 3.5 lakh SMEs and a wide network of 1200+ partners.