Published on August 01, 2024
Addressing the TBExG Leadership Series EDGE webinar ‘Fiber-Fuelled Journey & Leadership Lessons’ on July 31, 2024, Anand Sahai, CEO, Tata Play Fiber, shared the company’s success story with Tata group employees from around the world.
A student in Pune had to appear for a crucial online examination, and her father – a Tata Play Fiber customer – was nervous about the broadband connectivity through the duration of the online exam. Tata Play Fiber’s serviceman not only carried out a thorough inspection ahead of the exam, but actually stood by at the customer’s house throughout the three hours of the exam, and left the premises only after the daughter seamlessly completed the test. Citing this instance as an example of the Tata company’s culture of customer-centricity, Anand revealed that the high level of service is a key differentiator in the marketplace.
From facing an existential crisis in 2019 when a telecom giant’s launch in the wired broadband segment disrupted the market, to commanding a healthy premium and a robust growth rate in the highly competitive space today, Tata Play Fiber’s journey has been commendable. “While the average revenue per user (ARPU) of both the telecom majors is less than Rs.600, our ARPU has grown from Rs.770 to Rs.842, and we are on course to touch Rs.860 soon,” said Anand, adding that the company’s razor-sharp focus on selling high-end plans in the high-end market has helped it carve a niche – and enjoy a >30% premium over its rivals.
The Evolution
Tata Play Fiber – a 100% subsidiary of Tata Play - was founded in 2016 as a dedicated fiber-to-the-home service with the twin objective of ring-fencing Tata Play’s premium customers, as well as tapping the potential for incremental revenues from the fast-growing broadband segment. With a customer base of over 3,50,000 and a 99.95% network uptime, Tata Play Fiber has emerged as one of the finest broadband service providers in the country.
“We cater to discerning customers, and the quality of service and experience we offer is the key differentiator,” said Anand, adding that his team works on a 5-point plan of smart home-pass rollout, execution excellence, best-in-class customer experience, maximisation of revenue and optimisation of cost. With this approach, the team delivers a world-class experience to its customers, while creating value for its stakeholders. Registering a 27x growth in subscribers -- from just 13,000 in 2018 to the present 3.5 lakh+ -- Tata Play Fiber is already an EBITDA positive company despite the capex heavy nature of the business.
Project Lifeline: The Game-Changer
Barely months after a controlled roll-out in 2019, the situation was daunting for the company. The ratings were glum and the performance was struggling on all touch-points. The team was facing severe challenges on all fronts – low customer uptime of the network, weak IT support with manual processes, a fragile customer services system and an ineffective strategy & communication setup. A disruptive launch by competition further worsened the situation, and Tata Play Fiber was in the middle of a perform-or-perish situation. The need of the hour was to do a deep-dive and chalk out a strategy to survive-and-thrive. This marked the conception of Project Lifeline.
Under the Project Lifeline initiative, the company’s leadership team did an intense round of introspection to identify the challenges and draw an action plan to mitigate them. The starting point was to address the dismally low scores on each of the parameters of customer touch-points. A clearly defined roadmap was planned to be executed within three months. Every member of the company doubled-down the efforts for the task on hand and the outcome was tremendous. “The target was achieved: 43 actions were taken and 15 key outcomes were registered. After new deployments in IT, reduction of technical glitches by 20%, migration to a new call centre, resolution of optical issues for 77% of the customers and enhanced uptime, the response rate witnessed a sharp boost from 54% to 94%,” revealed Anand. The action statements were – find a solution, keep it simple, do it now. The crisis project was a game-changer, a turning point in the short history of the start-up.
Redefining Excellence
Buoyed by the boost from Project Lifeline, Tata Play Fiber was ably poised to capitalise on the boom in the broadband sector during the pandemic. “COVID-19 was a watershed moment for us. Even as the country’s wired broadband subscriber base swelled from 19-mn to 38-mn during the pandemic, we were at the forefront of delivering high quality service for the high-end consumer,” said Anand, adding that Tata Play Fiber was the first operator to launch WiFi6, a multi-channel enabled service with a speed of 500mbps.
On the customer service front, with the upgradation of the systems, a good 80% of the customer complaints are sorted by the call centre itself. “At the core of this success is our customer-centric approach to business; we believe no department or no individual can be fantastic unless the entire team does well,” said Anand. While Project Sampark involved 172 employees connecting with 1,800 former customers to understand the customer needs and eventually led to 10 process corrections, the Customer Discovery Programme had 90 cross-functional team members going through 2,200 call recordings to zero-in on 55 actionables for improvement of service. “It’s a culture of all for one, and one for all,” said Anand. Recognised for its quality of service at the global forum, Tata Play Fiber was a finalist at the prestigious Juniper Elevate Awards, along with Verizon and Deutsche Telecom. Closer home, Tata Play Fiber has consistently been ranked No. 1 on the Netflix ISP Speed Index ever since it was introduced in 2018.
The Way Forward
From offering best speeds and best-in-class service, to constantly innovating and adopting new technologies to deliver a better customer experience, Tata Play Fiber is a future-focused organisation. For instance, due to continuous improvement of customer call handling, the average call duration has been reduced by almost 50% to under four minutes. Similarly, the company is emergent in digital technologies like AI, machine learning and analytics in a significant way to not only be future-ready, but lead from the front as a premium player.
“Market potential is our top priority and we are on course for solid growth through a better product offering and better speeds, while further rationalising costs through initiatives like decentralised data core-centres, caching and peering, conversion from P2P to dark fiber, price negotiation and traffic load balancing,” revealed Anand. Notably, Tata Play Fiber’s cost per subscriber has steadily decreased – from the all-time high of Rs.700 to just Rs. 168 in 2023 through continuous cost rationalisation. The usage of data is estimated to increase 20-fold by 2030 and there is likely to be a sharp increase in the demand for digital services; Tata Play Fiber is smartly poised to drive the premium segment and create value for all stakeholders.