Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel attempt Co-branding to Attract Users

Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, India's top two telcos, have launched co-branded marketing plans to attract more users. Both the telcos are targeting the users churning from the struggling Vodafone Idea, as the telco continues to lose market share.

Reliance Jio's Disney+Hotstar Plans

Reliance Jio, on Tuesday, announced a number of new prepaid plans that offer complimentary subscription to the entire Disney+ Hotstar content library. The streaming service had announced in July that it will discontinue its VIP and Premium subscription system and will offer the entire content library starting September 1.

Under the new system, Jio would be able to offer content such as Disney+ originals. Along with that, now Disney+Hotstar users also will have access to content from the likes of Marvel, National Geographic, HBO, FX.

Of course, the plans include Voice and Data benefits. Along with that, the telco will offer SMS benefits and subscription to Jio digital library. The new plans start as low as Rs 499. The telco made these plans live on September 1.

Bharti Airtel's PepsiCo Adventure Resumes

On Airtel's part, the telco has re-launched an earlier co-branding pact with PepsiCo India.

Under this campaign, prepaid users will get up to 2GB of complimentary 4G data on purchase of Lay’s, Kurkure, Uncle Chipps and Doritos snack packs.

The campaign will allow the telco to leverage the rapid increase in mobile data usage, and snack sales, curiously enough. The pandemic has increased the snack sales, just as it has increased mobile data usage. Therefore, the campaign looks to harness the synergy thus created. India continues to work and study from home, and the companies want to capture that massive customer base.

A senior PepsiCo executive told ET, “data is an important currency, with people using it to work from home, for online education, gaming to streaming video-content".

He also said that customers tend to stock up on preferred food and beverage products, citing internal insights. He added that the customers inclined towards "larger pack sizes to avail of larger chunks of free data".

This partnership will see Airtel branding feature on Lay’s, Kurkure, Uncle Chipps and Doritos packs. Along with this, supporting ads will feature on TV; PepsiCo will look to spend about Rs 30 crore on the campaign across platforms.

As is the case with many of these promotions, customers will have to check inside the pack for the free data voucher. Then, the customers can redeem the voucher from the Airtel Thanks app, under the 'My Coupon' section.

The campaign goes live this week, and will run till March 31, 2022.

Mopping Up the Customers

The top two telcos continue their aggressive marketing strategy, at a time when Vi has been unable to spend enough on its networks. The third largest telco has so far been unable to stop the customer drain.

The three telcos have a combined customer base of over 1 billion; Vodafone Idea accounts for just over 25% of that.