Idea Cellular : What an Idea!

Idea Cellular started as a joint venture company between Aditya Birla group,

AT&T and the Tata Group. Both AT&T and Tata have since stepped out of the

venture. Idea Cellular has over 40 mn subscribers spread across Delhi,

Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh,

Uttaranchal, Haryana, UP-West, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala. Idea currently

covers about 45% of Indias population, and plans to start operations in Mumbai

and Bihar.

The Challenges



Idea went through a series of mergers and acquisitions including the recent

one of Spices cellular business. Talking about the challenges on the IT front,

Prakash Paranjape, CIO, Idea Cellular says Over the period, Idea Cellular has

grown through a series of mergers & acquisitions. In the initial phase, we had

disparate systems and processes which were barely serving the needs of the

business at that point of time. Our overall IT infrastructure had to be made

scalable to the service, and drive the growth over a longer period of time.

Also, forward looking systems and processes had to be built and rationalized in

all parts of the business.

Another recent challenge Idea encountered was when it chose to acquire Spice

Telecom that had operations in Punjab and Karnataka. According to Prakash

Paranjape, Our aim is to integrate the IT infrastructure in the two circles of

Karnataka and Punjab, which we have acquired from Spice, with the Idea network.

Most vital is the integration of solutions deployed on this infrastructure with

core Idea systems, in the shortest possible time. He is confident that

integration of IT infrastructure will be done in the stipulated time frame.

In fact, in a separate eight year deal (worth $19.2 mn) announced recently,

IBM will integrate, transition and migrate existing Spice applications,

hardware, packages and products to the Ideas transformed applications platform.

IBM will manage all IT operations and services for Ideas business in Punjab and

Karnataka besides migrating the IT help desk services to its centralized help

desk in Pune.

Another challenge which the company thinks it will overcome is the existing

partnership which Spice Telecom had with Modi Promoted VAS company Cellebrum,

which was also an in-house provider for the company. While Idea has a VAS tie up

with OnMobile. But Prakash Paranjape does not consider that as a challenge and

says, Idea works with multiple VAS partners, and Cellebrum is one of them.

OnMobile is another valued partner of Idea, so I dont think there is any

challenge for us.

The Idea



Before IBM came on board, Idea Cellular had disparate underlying servers,

storage and very few COTS (Commercial Off-The Shelf) application systems in

fragmented forms in multiple islands. It was this idea to integrate the IT

operations coupled with the sheer size of operations in terms of coverage and

the challenges in managing the explosive growth, the Idea management decided to

go the Airtel way by entering into a ten year deal with IBM termed as business

transformation pact. The mandate to IBM was to integrate, innovate and

transform Ideas business processes and IT infrastructure. IBM is in the process

of designing an innovative risk-reward revenue sharing model, and it covers

Ideas existing operations and potential new additions. The ten year pact,

depending upon Ideas business revenues and circle expansion, would size around

$600 mn to $ 800 mn.

The Partnerships



Apart from IBM, Idea has partnered with some of the leading players in their

own space for providing various value added services. For billing, it has

partnered with Atos Origin, while prepaid billing solution is from Bharti

Telesoft. Roaming solution is from Roamware. On Idea Cellulars overall

strategy, Prakash Paranjape of Idea Cellular says that A robust Information

Technology network is core to Ideas overall business strategy. It underpins

various business transformation initiatives at the company.

Sudesh Prasad



sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in