Bharti Airtel's Group CIO and Head of Cloud and Security Business, Harmeen Mehta, had a frank interview with Nik Willetts, CEO of TM Forum, on October 23 as part of the 'Hop on the agile express' session for the Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series.The roots of Bharti Airtel’s success are grounded in its mission and purpose to connect and enable all of India – and the rest of the world by proxy. As Willetts said, “It’s great to talk about a billion that's not about a billion dollars but a billion people”.
Inform has covered some of the company’s far reaching initiatives, such as Mehta’s insights into
digitalizing the masses and automated onboarding of new customers. This conversation looked at ways the operator is striving to fulfil its purpose, particularly during the global pandemic and in what Mehta describes as, “A country of contradictions; a country of plenty and [of] absolute nothingness.”
Enabling the billions
She noted that while hundreds of millions of Indian citizens are digitally-savvy smartphone users who use their devices even to pay for things, “There is a chasm which we've got to cross to get to the next billion”. This chasm was highlighted starkly when the operator was faced with keeping people connected during lockdown. In villages for example, when locals ran out of data, most if not all the local shops they use to use to top-up data and recharge their connectivity were shut and they had no other options.
Within days, Bharti Airtel equipped ATMs and medical stores (the only ones that were allowed to open during lockdown) with recharge functions. Mehta said being able to respond so speedily is “one of the magical things about agile”. The telco also invoked a sense of togetherness in its promotion of the recharging facilities, with a sense that “these people are here to help you”.
These sentiments shone through the company’s campaign – which quickly went viral in the best sense – encouraging people to help each other recharge their phones. Mehta stated, “This [pandemic] brought humanity together. People were more than ready to help everybody else and we just played on some of those sentiments and took hold of those problems.”
A license to bank
Willetts asked about the company’s other efforts to “enable the billions”, Mehta recalled a few years ago when Bharti Airtel acquired a payments bank license. She said, “It's a…unique bank because the entire concept of that entity is financial inclusion and helping reach those who are underbanked or unbanked. There's more than 300-350 million people in India who are underbanked.”
She explained that the telco has over a million distributors and retailers, all generally within 200 metres of people’s homes, and so as well as top-ups and data recharging, “Each one of them is now a banking correspondent, so it's like a human bank. It's a human ATM. You can give them money and they put it in a new account. You can take your cash out…you can buy insurance, and that includes special health insurance for Covid-19. You can pay your utility bills. So, the [store keeper] is a human teller, a human ATM and a financial advisor, and your telecom recharge retailer; everything in one.” In most of rural India, people’s SIMs act like bank accounts, with mobile numbers as their bank account numbers.
Simplification is where the heart is
Mehta acknowledges that communication service providers can introduce many new business models and innovations, but added that it’s crucial to start always with the core of what customers want and need. “What customers are looking for today, after facing the challenges of the health pandemic especially…is simplicity of life, focusing on things that matter the most and wanting everything else to be taken care of,” she concludes. For Mehta, that’s what Bharti Airtel and its industry partners can work on: “Help simplify the lives of our customers and bring a lot more value to them in a very hassle-free manner.”
You can watch the full session on-demand now. Watch the rest of Digital Transformation World Series content live and on-demand now too! Not registered for DTWS yet? There’s still time. Join 12,000 of your peers online through November 12. CSPs receive complimentary passes. Sign up here. 
