Thank you, Vaibhav. Now I formally thank [unclear] to introduce the leadership team and take the session forward.

Abhijit, over to you.

Thank you. Thank you, Arpit.

Good evening and a very warm welcome to all of you present here in this room, as well as to all of you who have joined us online from different parts of the world. I'll start from the extreme left.

We have Ranjan. Ranjan heads our commercial function.

Must say that we are in for a big, big commercial discussions. We have already done that, and now going forward, Ranjan is a very, very important player and a veteran in the telecom industry.

Pankaj Kapdeo, another veteran, he is the Chief Legal Counsel for us, been with us for over two 2.5 decades. Ambika leads our chief regulatory and external affairs function.

I'll say fairly new to the telecom, but that brings a outside-in perspective. Ambika joins us last year two 2.5 years back from Netflix.

Guru, our Chief HR Officer, again brings diverse experience. Was last in Aditya Birla Fashion.

Joined us roughly around six, eight months back. Arvind, I'll say half and half, half FMCG, half telco for the last 10 years with us, heads our enterprise business.

Avneesh Khosla, again a veteran in telecom, with Vodafone earlier and Vodafone Idea now for the last eight, nine years, is the Chief Marketing Officer. Jagbir is our CTO.

I jokingly call him father of the Indian telco system. He's been there, is credited with actually launching most of the network in the country and not only in the country, but across many international places, heads the technology.

Then the latest entrant is Tejas. Tejas joins us very recently from Mondelez as he's the new CFO for us.

If you really see the diverse experience that we have, and this is the team which is really accountable for Vodafone Idea Limited and to take it forward. Thank you, gentlemen and ladies.

We'll get you back here on the question-and-answer session when we start that question and answer. Since this is my first interaction with most of you, let me introduce myself for people who don't know me.

I am Abhijit and taken over as the CEO of this company five months back. While that's the new role, not new to the industry, not new to the company.

Been in the industry now for over 30 years in different geography. Have served 16 different markets over the last 30 years, different operators, different functions.

I also joined Vodafone earlier and then Vodafone Idea was there in the operations team. Before taking over this role, I used to head the enterprise as a Director for the enterprise business in Vodafone Idea, and then from there I took over as the Chief Operating Officer for the last four years before I moved into this role.

Interested in the industry, and hence I also chair Cellular Operator Association of India as well as the India Mobile Congress. As the name suggests, the construct of this meeting is a little different.

It's a cross-section of people, people online, people in this room, analysts, investors. Hence, we call it a meeting where we need to talk about our story, the story that for a long period of time we have not really spoken about.

I think as the new CEO and the re-energized and the super confident team now, we need to decide on what part of the story we carry forward and what part of the story we rewrite. I'll keep this session a little interactive, and obviously there will be a question and answer, but I'll keep my session for probably 30 to 35, 40 minutes, try and give you a little background on what's really happening in our business, and then we'll open the house for the Q&A.

Okay. Let me move of saying why are we here today.

Three very, very specific topics to be covered. One, on the recent development.

All of you have heard about it. You've read about it, but I think it is the right place for us to talk about what's the development and what's our perspective on that development.

Second, very important, glimpses of our business the way we look at it. There are shades, there are colors which probably is not seen, and I think it's important for us to talk about some of those shades and colors, and then present our story.

Then, thirdly and very, very importantly, what's the way forward? These are the three distinct chapters, I would say, in our mind.

Let me start with a recent development. Month of December has been a pretty eventful month for us in Vodafone Idea Limited.

Distinct events, three of them. The first one is the NCD.

I think all of you are aware that we could raise ₹3,300 crore on the NCD. What is more important are the factors that we could raise this despite the fact that the AGR clarity was not there.

This was raised before the AGR clarity came. The marquee name of the lenders, as well as this allows us to continue with the momentum that we have built over the last few quarters on the capex.

I'll talk a little bit more about the investments that we have made and how this quantum of money really helps us drive the business to move it forward. I think the second very important thing is what we call CLAM, which is basically a contingent liability adjustment mechanism.

For people who are not aware, when the merger took place, Vodafone Plc and VIL had an agreement of capping of a ₹8,400 crore, which was for the period of seven years, which expired on 30th of June '25. That money was to be given by Vodafone Vodafone Plc to VIL provided VIL makes the payment for the AGR dues.

Now, this was obviously sub judice. We made a payment of ₹2,000 crore in the year 2020, and hence that ₹2,000 crore was kind of paid by Vodafone Plc to VIL, and hence the remaining amount was ₹6,400 crore.

The agreement obviously expired in June, and hence from that point of view, this money was really not due from an agreement point of view. I think Vodafone Plc, as a committed promoter, extended that period of agreement till 31st of December of 2025 and has also executed that in two parts.

Out of the ₹6,400 crore which is due, ₹2,300 crore is something that will be paid in cash over the next 12 months, and Vodafone Plc has also taken 328 crore share, which has been kept earmarked for VIL, which VIL can sell when the need arises. I think it's a very, very defining moment from the commitment of a promoter into the company.

I think the third part, which is extremely important for all of us, is the AGR. All of you have read about it.

I think to my mind, it is definitive, conclusive, long-term solution with a very clear visibility on our cash flow. We are very thankful to the honorable Supreme Court, as well as to the Government of India, to get this done.

This is not for Vodafone Idea Limited as a company alone. It is more for the country.

It is more for the digital infrastructure that the government has the vision to put. This is in that direction that this relief comes more as a Vodafone Idea Limited, as well as from the country's point of view of helping the digital infrastructure flourish in this company.

Let me take a moment on talking about what this AGR is. I'm sure some of you have read it.

All of you have read it in the newspaper, but from our side, this is the first part is that the dues are frozen as on 31st of December 2025. That due amount is ₹87,695 crore.

That's the first point. The second point is that for the next 10 years, there's a very small amount of payment that we need to make to the government, and I'll talk about it.

The third important point is that there is a reassessment of the entire amount of ₹87,695 crore, which has already started. In the first four years, we need to pay maximum of ₹124 crore every year to the government.

The next four year is ₹100 crore, and the last six years, which is from '35 till '41, we pay in six equal installment whatever the reassessed amount is, which is frozen at 87694, but the reassessment is going on. We have all the documents because it's a long reassessment starting from 2006-07 to 18-19.

It's a long reassessment. The good part is that the pace of reassessment at different levels are extremely, extremely encouraging, and we expect to close that very fast.

Whatever is that amount which is reassessed is then kind of distributed over the six equal installment towards the last part of the payment, which starts from '36 till '41. I think, from our point of view, this was the biggest overhang which was there is behind us.

With that, now let me move to the next section of saying that if AGR judgment loomed large over us over all these years, what it really did to us? We are being very, very pragmatic in saying what it did to us.

It's a vicious cycle of where we were for the longest period of time. AGR overhang resulted into funding not being there.

Funding not being there resulted into investments and deployments of the network, which effectively meant network experience took a beating. That led to a brand perception and a loss of customer confidence, and eventually a loss of customer.

This over the last couple of years has been the cycle that we have been there. I'll show you some of the data to kind of tell what I'm trying to explain.

In my opinion, there was an unprecedented force which got unleashed on us over these years. Despite the fact that we were being written off almost every single day, we stood committed.

The promoters stood committed, our team stood resilient, and we could do small little things that we could manage within the resources that we had. We kept our customer obsession alive rather than getting sucked into the negativity.

Even in the toughest of the time, we kept our motto of the customer obsession alive by offering differentiated products and services, whether it is in the consumer space or in the enterprise space. We made sure that our brand is still the loved brand is there.

From there, we moved also. While this is one of the element that we were doing, I think another important part to note here is that in all these years, we could also make payment for all the bank debts that we had.

We cleared 36,500 crore of loan in the last six years before the FPO. This was all from the internal accruals.

That really shows the efficiency on the financial part as well as the business part that we could deliver despite the tough time that we were really going through. In the similar time frame, we also post-merger got an equity infusion by the promoters of ₹27,000 crore, which again shows the commitment from both Vodafone Plc as well as the ABG Group.

Then we moved on to the FPO, which is two years back, one of the most successful FPOs that we did. I think, for the longest period of time, we have been pretty inconsistent as far as the investment is concerned.

If you see here, from quarter one of FY '24, we have been on an average spending roughly around 400-odd crore on the network deployment, and at the same time when the competition was really investing upwards of 4,500, 5,000 crore a quarter, not as an industry, as one operator. You can imagine the kind of scale which was there.

Then comes the FPO money, which is where we started to invest the stronger kitty that we had. Obviously, we had to plan and kind of prioritize the markets that we wanted to invest in.

This, over the last seven quarters, we have invested ₹16,000 crore, which has reflected in increasing the brand experience through a network experience. We added more than 100,000 sites.

Let me kind of explain this. We've not kind of captured.

We also added, we had the infrastructure which was only 4G, the 2G was not there. We also added 2G in that.

We had 4G, but all layers was not added. We added the layers to make sure that the customers are able to get the best experience that they could, because we have the spectrum availability, which is pretty decent and adequate for us.

We also kind of increased the capacity. One of the challenges that we have in the business or we had was to say that it is not really about the coverage.

In a city like Mumbai or a city like Delhi or Pune or an urban market, the issue was not really the coverage. The issue was, how do you experience this if you have the site which is congested?

We needed to decongest the site. When you see 43% of our capacity was increased in all these sites, which then kind of gave a very different level of experience to the customers in all these market, not only the urban market, but also the rural market.

We also increased our population coverage by 100 million in the last six to seven quarters. We were at a 77% coverage.

We have now at around 85.5%, 86% coverage at a pan-India level. That's a pretty significant amount of money that we have invested in driving the experience for our customer.

We also launched 5G in 43 cities. As we speak today, last week, while we have launched 43 city, Kerala was the first circle where every single district is covered now with 5G.

You'll see more of that coming in different cities and different circles going forward. What it did to us, I think it's important to understand that over the last six years, if you track, and all of you would have this number, we were losing in the range of 15 to 16 million customers a year.

I have just projected two years here, which has come down significantly in this year at right now at a 5.3 million. This includes the report that we have done yesterday.

If I take the Q3 out and I'll at a very broad level tell you about a Q3, this number of 5.3 that you see on a negative at a cumulative basis for the year was 1.5 million. If you really see, the swing is of almost a 12 million swing, barring the quarter three.

The reason I'm calling out quarter three is because we, by design, took some corrective stance in certain circles to make sure that after the deployment of the capex and the investment, we start acquiring a customer which is a good quality customer. Hence, we took that call consciously to go slow on the acquisition in certain markets, so that the quality of customer that we acquire is far better, and you will see that cascading impact in the coming quarters.

The other part that I wanted to really talk about before I get on to the way forward is and this question is often asked on saying, where have you guys invested? It's not showing up at a overall level.

It's not really giving the return. I just want to kind of give you this glimpse of saying the different ways of looking at picture.

The money that we have invested in this, currently, if I were to look at December over December revenue, at a national level, we're growing at a 3%. In the markets where we have invested in the capacity and the coverage that I just explained, we have grown by 5.5%, 6%, 5.7%.

The markets that I have not touched, I have not touched 40%, 45% of the market because obviously the kitty was a particular kitty. We needed to prioritize that, and hence we have kind of managed to keep the priority intact.

This is the number as far as the growth is concerned. I also want to kind of give you a little flavor of how has this panned out when I look at some of the markets which are very different, and I've picked up two market to just give an example and make the point.

If you look at Maharashtra, this is the actual picture of Maharashtra before we started the rollout, which is a September '24 when we got the FPO, we had not started the rollout. If you see here, Maharashtra has 36 districts.

We were less than 80% covered in 23 out of the 36 districts of Maharashtra. When we started, and we had adequate spectrum, but we had not fired those spectrum on all the site, and hence the customers were not really getting the experience that they did wanted.

This is what we did when we put the investment in Maharashtra, and obviously Maharashtra is one of our critical circles. We have moved the needle from now being only four markets or five markets now which is less than 80% and most of the markets getting covered.

Now, this has given me a disproportionate result as far as Maharashtra as a circle is concerned. What you saw there at a 3% growth at a country level, in Maharashtra, if I were to look at December over December, it's a 9% growth.

What I saw there as a 5.7% growth on the invested market is 14% here. The good news here is that in Maharashtra, quarter two onwards, we started to even grow and add customers month on month, which very clearly reflects one thing: that if we are putting in the capex, we're putting in the investment in the right places in the adequate quantity and consistently, the market is responding very, very positively as far as.

This is another example of UP East. Similar place, different markets are at a different stage.

UP East was at a very different stage of network deployment by us and by competition. This is what we did in UP East over the last three, four, five quarters, and the result again is for us to see at a 11% growth in the invested versus a 9% at a circle level.

Then there are circles. Out of the 22 circles, if I look at a circle level growth December over December, we are growing in 14 out of the 22.

We have 17 priority circles the way we say. Out of the 17 priority circles, these are all 13, 14 priority market which are going.

I think the journey has started. It's a long haul.

We've not been investing. We've lost significant amount of customers, it's taking a little bit of a time for us to get back, but I think the proof of the pudding is in eating, and I think that's very, very clearly visible.

Moving on from here, the other thing that I also wanted to show, because we also kind of at times look at a picture from one point of view, which to say, what is my subscriber trajectory looking like, which is what I just showed, which has started to move. I also wanted to show you some of the other things on the way we look at the business.

We look at seven parameters in this business. What is the number of site that I have added?

What is the broadband customer, which is the data customer that is increasing, or the 4G, 5G customer that are increasing? What is my revenue growth?

What is my EBITDA growth? What is my ARPU growth?

What is my consumption growth? Because if the consumption is there, which means that the customers are enjoying the network, they have a better experience, and hence they will use.

If you see, all of these parameters other than the subs, which has started to move into the positive direction, all of them are, for the last six quarters, moving into the positive direction, whether it is an ARPU, whether it is the broadband subscriber, whether it is the revenue, whether it is EBITDA. If I look at it holistically with all these things put together, six out of the seven parameters that we look at from a business point of view is pointing in all in one direction.

Even the subscriber loss, which was huge for us, has been absolutely narrowed, and we are very confident that we'll kind of get past this negative customer add very, very soon. Now with this key challenge behind us, like we have discussed in the previous section, this was the biggest overhang, and hence this really marks the beginning of a new era for Vi.

Telecom is not new to us. We have been in this business for the last three decades.

We have all the right infrastructures, we have the scale, we have the distribution muscle, we have the execution power, we have the team, we have the infrastructure. When I'm saying is we have adequate spectrum.

I don't think there is anything that is coming new to us. The only and the biggest overhang, like I said, which was in a vicious cycle, was this AGR overhang.

Now, this behind us, I think the game here is now to move from survival and suspicion to strength, and from the intent to really move into the impact, of intent of making the meaningful, constructive, long-term impact. I think that's the journey that I'm going to talk about starting now.

For all the practical purposes, it is a reset for Vi. It is a Vi 2.0.

Next three years, very, very simple, easy to understand, easy to execute, three philosophies which we are calling it 1-2-3. These are the three things that we, as the team that you saw us here and every employee of this organization, is committed to deliver.

These are the three key deliverables that we are looking at over the next three years: sustained customer addition, double-digit revenue growth, and three times the EBITDA in the next three years. That's a pretty large, ambitious goal, and we are absolutely committed and accountable to deliver this to everybody.

The reason why we are confident is we are saying we are going to commit ₹45,000 crore of investment over the next three years in this business. This is in addition to the ₹18,000 crore that we have already invested over the last six quarters.

If you three over the last if in the four 4.5-year period, we would be investing more than 60,000 crore of investment into this business. How is this 45,000 going to convert?

Very simple, pragmatic, practical approach of investing this money. This money is going to be invested in the network expansion, in a extremely aggressive rollout of network.

The strategy that we have is very simple: 17-5-5. 17 is 17 priority market, 5 is the five other market, and the last 5 that you see is actually a 5G.

I'll start from the point number three mentioned here, which is pivoting on the 5G. We, over the next 12 to I'll say 30 months, will cover all the markets in the country, which is urban, and urban here I'm defining as 20,000-plus population towns, with 5G.

I also need to bridge the gap on a 4G. Over the next 12 to 24 months, in all the 17 priority markets, which contributes to 99.2% of my revenue, I'll have absolute parity with the competition in those market, which gives the option and opportunity and choice to customers.

In those five markets, which I am currently invested as far as 2G is concerned, we'll make sure that all those 2G sites are converted into 4G, as well as we are mindful of the fact that in those five market, there would be large set of customers who would be going as an in-roamer. We'll make sure that all those places are also covered as far as the 4G is concerned.

From a network deployment point of view, there's a large amount of investment which is going to get into the network. I think the Satcom is another part, is still a little far in future, but I think our teams are deeply engaged in making sure that all those regulatory clearances are attained.

This is going to serve us good. We have a tie-up with AST, which is providing this service.

Our sense is it's still 18 months to two years away, but we are absolutely committed to get that into the non-terrestrial network, and that will help us to bring the network and the experience alive in the areas which we will not be present in and which is a difficult area to build. I think the last one is extremely critical, the FWA.

We, through FWA, which is on the 5G, we would definitely want to get into the SOHO and the home space, which we are not present right now. We are looking at some option and opportunity as far as the getting an entry into a SOHO or a small office home office concerned or a home-connected is concerned.

That's largely the network game plan that we have. To my mind, this other thing that I really want to add on the network is that our 100% of our network operation is insourced, unlike many of our competitors, which essentially gives us the quality and control of service, which is absolutely unparalleled.

Second, we have all our SNOC, which is the Network Operating Center. They're all latest AI-enabled, which connects right from the wireless to the fiber to the core to the transport.

State of art back end, committed team, AI put in place wherever it is required, which gives this experience of the network. My sense is that network or technology, for that matter, while it is a big divider, it is also an equalizer at some place.

Hence, I firmly believe that network is a hygiene, and nobody knows better than us that it's a hygiene. Hence, beyond a point, to keep that as a differentiation is really not the right thing to do.

Hence, for us, service is going to be a big differentiator. I'll talk a little bit about what do I mean by service.

This is not only customer service. This is the service about network, this is about customer service, this is about the touch points, this is about the experience.

In our business, most of the customers who connect with us connect with us with either a query, or a question, or an angst, or a clarification. I think at that point in time, empathy is very, very important.

That's the basic of the service that we are trying to put as a framework. I'll give you one or two examples of what we are doing right now.

We call it a Project Vishwas. We, as we speak, look at each and every process, because the fact of the matter is that the customers are now lots and lots of them are digital native customers.

The experience that they need is a digital experience, whereas we are not a digital-born company from that point of view, and hence we are kind of very quickly making that shift. We are reviewing every single process and making sure that every process is relevant to the customer today.

I'll just talk of one program here that we do, which we call interaction at 50, that which is called as iAt50 that you see here, is a very simple thing of saying if my process is correct, as a customer you don't need to connect with me or call me or contact me, because you know exactly what you're getting, what you're paying. Hence, the target that we have taken on ourselves to say my interaction at a customer level should come down by 50% in one year.

We started this couple of quarters back in April. As we speak, we're taking a target of 50.

Right now we are at a 29%. Similarly, we also say that if a customer has come to me once, then there's no need for the customer to come back to me for the same set of problem, which is what we call zero interaction complaint, ZIC.

These are basic human intervention that we are doing. In addition to this, we are obviously doing a lot as far as the AI and the technology-led service differentiation is concerned, whether it is on a voice biometric, whether it is to make sure that it is a self-optimized network, or it is the emotional intelligence connected through a GenAI into the call center.

I think there is a huge amount of work that is happening as we speak to make sure that service as a differentiator remains one of the core parts to us. Moving on, I think I spoke about the differentiated.

We are known in Vi as a company which provides lot of differentiation. Some of them is REDX for postpaid.

Truly unlimited, I don't know how many of we are the only company who really offers truly unlimited in the international roaming. There are 40 countries where you can travel.

You don't have to bother about what your data rate is going to be, what your voice rate is going to be. It is a fully unlimited pack.

We also offer unlimited on the prepaid. Again, the only company in India to offer that, which is a truly unlimited one.

You pay X price, and then entire month's voice and data is there. The question is, we are looking at all of these as the deep research trying to find out what the customers are saying, what is the insight, and then making sure that all of these differentiation are created, which talks to customer.

We also launched something called Vi Protect, whereby now we have close to a billion calls and SMSs is what we've kind of put under the suspected spam category. I think there is a fair bit of amount work happening as far as and on the going forward.

Last part on this rather not the last part, but I think a very, very critical part on this: I firmly believe now telecom is becoming a mature industry from a service industry point of view, and the more mature you become, a complacency is setting in into the system. With two large players playing, this complacency is a little more over-indexed.

With all of this and the network investment that we are trying to put in, I think we are absolutely at the right place to challenge the status quo with our compelling brand narrative, more on the relationship rather than on the transaction. Watch this space over the next few months, you'll see a lot of action happening on the way we will connect with our current existing customers, as well as intending customers, as far as a brand is concerned and the brand narrative is concerned.

That takes me to the last part of our strategy before I come to the employees is the enterprise segment. I think extremely important segment for us.

Currently, we are catering to most of the large organizations. We divide that into three parts.

We have the large corporate, then the mid-tier, and then the SME, and then the government. There are four tiers.

All of them are kind of catered as we speak through our dedicated team. On the product side, we distribute that into three categories, which is called connectivity, which is the basic connectivity of mobility as well as the fixed-line connectivity, which every organization needs.

Then the second part is on the IoT, which again, there are different versions. Again, a data point: 70% to 80% of the cars that you see in the Indian market, which are connected car, are actually supported by the connectivity that we provide.

All the car brands that you see, and this is a big business. We are one of the pioneers in this, whether it is a smart gas, smart meter, all of that comes into IoT.

We have a very nice demonstration right outside this room, which actually gives you a sneak peek in what really we are doing. We have the India's only operator-led AI innovation lab in Andheri, where there are big corporates come and do the lab testing on different devices.

It's a very large ecosystem which is evolving, and we are deeply invested in that. Then the last part is more on the emerging businesses, which is where the cloud services, security as a service, all of that kind of comes and sits in very nicely.

Whether from the breadth of the product category is concerned or the depth of the segment and the GTM or the go-to-market is concerned, both ways, we really cut it across very well. That brings me to the most important asset that we have.

I think people are the most important asset over the last few years what we have seen. Had it not been for this resilient team across the company, as well as our partners, our investors, I don't think we would have been in this position.

Hence, this is twofold thing. One is a gratitude.

Second is absolutely a promise from all the employees and for all the employees to say all of this needs to be done with all these employees supercharged. The way we look at this asset is we call it a 3CTO, which is career, capability, culture, talent and ownership, and performance of ownership.

That's how we drive this whole thing. It's an extremely important part of the business for us.

This is what the mantra that we live with: employee first, customer always, and experience is everything. This is what every employee in the organization is committed towards, exactly for the reason that I said.

I will now tell you why I'm confident that this will be delivered, and then I'll open the house for the question and answer. I think the worst is behind us.

The AGR overhang is behind us. The journey, what has changed, is the place that we stand.

Where we were standing four quarters back, two quarters back, two months back, and where we are standing today is a very, very different place. We are a very different set of people, extremely confident of delivering what we have in mind to deliver.

We know how to move this. We have done this over many, many years in different markets, and we have no doubt in our mind that we will once again do it, and then let the action speak.

With that, I'll leave you with the last slide which we showed, which again is a commitment from us to all of you, as well as all our employees are in it together. Thank you very much for being a patient listener.

I'll now request my colleagues in the leadership team to join me on the stage, and we can open the house for any questions, clarification, suggestions that you might have. I think Arpit is the one who's kind of anchoring this, you can.

You can introduce yourself, Sanjesh. I might not know everybody, but

We can't hear you.

Come. Yeah.

Okay. We can sit.

Okay. I'll sit here.

Sit. Come, Ambika.

Yes, Sanjesh.

hope you can hear me.

Yeah. Sorry.

I'll start with congratulating. Very beautiful presentation, very confident.

It gives a lot of confidence to us in terms of how to see Vodafone from here, Vodafone Idea from here. I got two two broader question.

First on the funding, second on the deployment. On the funding side, are we open or promoter willing to invest more equity?

I can understand debt part of it, but that again is a kind of over vicious cycle. It asks for more cash in terms of interest payment.

That again puts stress on us. Are we open for the equity from the promoter?

Are we open for more strategic investor? What is the view in terms of the funding?

What are we looking here? The most important part is that are we ready to onboard a different strategic partner apart from the existing promoter?

Is equity is a serious opportunity are we looking up at next 12 to 18 months, because that changes the equation in terms of cash flow? That on the cash funding side.

Second, on the deployment side, more on the capex, I do want to understand what are priority. Are we thinking more out of the box here, because, one, we are late, we need to cover a lot of ground here.

The other thing, what we have learned from the past is that we don't want to be in a game of catching the technology, right? We have seen a lot of companies in the race to catch the technology, I have actually fallen off.

Are we thinking something out of the box, going standalone 5G instead of trying with 5G, cutting on 4G, putting more 5G, any breakthrough solution on the backhaul, because I think that becomes a very big bottleneck for us? On that side, if you can give more color on the deployment, because 45,000 absolute amount looks fantastic, but relative to the competition, the number still looks underwhelming.

Just wanted to understand how are we planning to up our game with a capital which is significantly lower than the competition and be a very relevant player in the market?

Yeah. Thank you.

Thanks, Sanjesh, for asking that question. I think couple of questions that you asked in that, one is on the equity part of it, second is on the deployment, and then third is what's the differentiation going to be and what's the pace of deployment that is going to be?

I think let me take the first question first. See, the way we are really looking at of a current investment structure is, as we have said, we are looking at a 25,000 crore of bank funding and a 10,000 crore of a non-funded facility.

See, we are at a particular level of an EBITDA, which is say a 9,200 for the last year. From a EBITDA to a debt ratio in a infrastructure business, anything upwards of a 3, 3.5 also works as a ratio.

Currently, we are looking at a 2.5. At this point in time, with the investments that we have already done, I don't think we are looking at an equity at this point in time.

Say, two years later, how the situation emerges is a very, very different thing, and we will probably address it at that point in time. I don't think both the promoters are deeply engaged, committed into this business.

As and when the need is felt, we'll take a call. Today, we are not really looking at any equity infusion right now in the business, because we think that we have adequate funding through the instruments that I just spoke of to take care of the investments.

Also, I said that these investments will yield a particular level of EBITDA, which then kind of takes care of both the capex that is required. Then I'll request Jagbir to probably add on.

See, the way we are really looking at this deployment strategy is very clearly, as I said, it is a 5G-pivoted one. I'll give you some of the numbers and the colors why we are looking at this.

Today, when you look at the business, almost 40-odd percent of the subscribers are using a 5G handset, not necessarily a 5G network, but a 5G handset in. This is not really concentrated in a certain geography.

We need to prioritize of where we would want to invest. That's one.

Number two is, when you look at the network architecture, and we are following the NSA architecture, where the back of the voice falls onto the core of the 4G. Hence, to that level, we need to have a equal distribution.

When I'm saying not financial equal distribution, but the distribution in proportion to where we are going to invest the money as far as the 5G is concerned and the 4G is concerned. We are very clear and in the 17 markets that we are present and where the priority is there.

We do not have in a lot of markets very large delta, as I showed you. Some of the market delta which was there has already been covered.

These are two parallel tracks that we are looking at from a deployment point of view. As I said, it's a extremely aggressive target that we are taking for the next 12 to 15, 18 months of doing a two parallel tracks of covering the gaps where we have in these markets as far as the 4G is concerned, because I can't really go and then put a 5G, because it might be a little bit of a wishful thinking from that point of view.

Then at the same time, the places that I have 5G, like I have already got a 43 cities which are covered in 5G, we are expanding that to another 100-odd cities over the next couple of months. That journey continues.

Obviously this, with the new funding coming in, takes us into a different league. Jagbir, would you want to kind of add something on the NSA and

the I think you asked the question on the SA side, for example. First thing is, whatever the architecture and the product we are deploying, yes, we are launching the service NSA, but overnight, we can change to SA.

Depending on the use case, right now you can see in the market, the use case for the SA, they are not that many. As and when the use case they picked up, then within 48 hours, 72 hours, the radio support both SA and NSA.

No issues. It's a software program.

We can do from our Network Operation Center or we can change it. We are doing for the core network.

We are already getting ready with all our partners. That is on the investment, fully protected, ready for the SA as and when the use case and the revenues required is available in the market.

Second is the 5G deployment should be the smart deployment. It's not that we go everywhere.

We have to see the handset, you have to see what kind of traffic coming in, you have to see the community of interest, you have to see many other parameters. When Abhijit said that we are going to do the 5 five markets, for example, we will have the all markets, but we'll go in the smart way of deploying where I deploy and immediately I get the returns on that.

Transport side.

Transport, we are actually last two years, whatever the deployment we are doing is all IP-enabled, all routers. We are ensuring that we are getting good transport architecture.

At the same time, we have deployed 35,000 km fiber in last 18 months, 35,000 km additional fiber. We have 350,000 km fiber already.

In this plan, the way we are going, every time we are giving the good capex investment actually happening on the transport to ensure backhaul everything without any delay.

Yeah.

Hello. Am I audible?

Yeah.

I'm Pranav Kshatriya from Emkay Global Securities. My question is regarding your aspiration of 3x cash EBITDA in next three years.

If I just do back of the envelope calculation, if you have to increase your EBITDA by almost ₹20,000 crore, you will have to increase your revenue by around ₹29,000 crore, assuming 70% incremental EBITDA margin. For that, you need roughly 18% revenue CAGR for next three years.

If I look at even in the circles where you have invested, like Maharashtra and UP, you are barely touching double digit. What gives you the confidence to reach to 18-odd percent revenue CAGR for next three years?

Yeah. Thanks, Pranav, for asking that question.

I think the way we are really looking at it is twofold, threefold. One, we are at a particular level of EBITDA that is there.

Then this EBITDA has not really taken the entire yield of the ₹18,000 crore that by March that we have said that will be invested. We have invested 16,000, another, we have given a forward guidance any which way.

This entire amount of capex which is deployed is not really yielded the full result. That's point number one.

Over the next three years, these capex of 18,000 is going to yield result. That's point number one.

Point number two is that the 45,000 that we are going to deploy is obviously, not entire 45,000 is going to give us the result, because some of this will be deployed in the year three, but the first two year of deployment will also start giving us the result, which is what we are building as far as the subscriber and the investment is concerned. Second part is that when we start the investment, what are the things that we are not able to do today is, one, attract the customers in the population area that I'm not covered in, which will start happening.

Second biggest thing for me is not really the acquisition engine. The number of customers that I acquire a month is pretty decent from the network in that area.

We are in the range of a 30% of a customer acquisition. Challenge for us is the retention of the customer.

Now, the more network that I put, and the reason the customers are leaving is not for the want of a better service which is a non-network service. It is because of the non-availability or the experience that they're not getting.

The moment I start putting the 4G, the 5G, there's no reason for me to believe that my customer retention will start kind of coming down, which all of this adds to the customer. One is the quality of customer that I spoke of, second is the retention of the customer that I spoke of, and then third is obviously, as and when some of the industry changes happen, that will get baked into it.

All put together, I think in our mind, we are very clear that this number is an achievable number. We have seen that happening in the past.

It's not that we are the only ones who are kind of looking at it. If you look at the industry over the last couple of months or years rather, you have seen a 14%, 12% CAGR, which happens for the other operators.

Fair enough. Just a follow-up here is one needs to have some market share gain to reach that number, because are we envisaging the industry itself will grow at 18% or you think you will be able to gain some market share?

No. The way we are really looking at it is from a market share point of view is, I think to be pragmatic and practical will be to say that we've been declining for the longest period of time.

Rather than kind of getting into an upward swing, first I need to arrest that decline and then start to grow. In the next three years, we're kind of building a particular ambition on the market share, but it is not very aggressive market share gain.

It is our own gain in the market. Because, as you would understand, it's a ₹3 lakh crore industry.

To get a 1%, the other guys don't grow, you need to grow by 3,000 alone, we are pragmatic. We have taken that practical aspect into the business in a cash flow to kind of arrive at that.

Sure. Thank you.

Thanks, Pranav.

Thank you. Hello.

This is Arun from Avendus Park. My first question is on

Okay. Sorry.

the ₹45,000 crore capex. Can you just broadly give an indication how much of this will go into access network, transport, core, and probably, again, split that into, say, maintenance capex and growth capex?

Secondly, we have not addressed how we are going to pay off spectrum liabilities. If you can give a thoughts on how we are going to fund that payment, that would be helpful.

I'll give you a broad sense on the capex on the access and the transport and core will be, I'll say, in the range of a 70-30 from a radio to a core at a very ballpark level. Obviously, it'll depend, as Jagbir was explaining, in a different circle at different level, from a capex, or the investment point of view, because large part of it will get into where it is a 4G, there'll be a less of a transport, but if it is a 5G, it's more of a transport.

It kind of balances off at a 70-30 ratio. The second question you said on the spectrum, see, the way we look at the spectrum dues is over the next three years, we have a due of ₹49,000 crore of spectrum, ₹7,000, ₹15,000, and ₹27,000.

When we look at the EBITDA of a three, a three times from now, and then the business efficiencies that is built into that, I think the way we are really looking at it is that takes care of the spectrum, including the capex that we are talking of. That's the part of the cash flow that we are looking at.

One is my current EBITDA is 9,500 crore. That itself takes me to a 28, 29,000 crore, and then there are business efficiency with all these investments that we are talking of and the one that we have already done, which kind of takes us to that, and then there are certain non-financial things.

The CLAM part is one of them, and then there are certain other non-financial. All put together, I think we are in a comfortable position to pay up the spectrum as well as the capex investment through the bank funding, obviously, that we are looking at.

Right. One follow-up from the previous question that you have built in some market share gain, a reasonable market share gain on a subscriber base.

What do you anticipate how will they react and how are we going to counter that? Because they have a much better free cash flow as compared to you, they have much better resource, much better distribution, and operating leverage.

How are we going to counter that reaction from them?

The way I would really want to approach this question is that, yes, they probably have I'll not say better network, they have a wider reach network. I don't think they have a better distribution from where we are present.

We are absolutely similar or better in certain markets, otherwise, we would not have been in the position. The distribution is a game of acquisition.

If you look at my acquisition, I am fairly there as far as any competition is concerned. That talks of the distribution, whether it is a direct or the indirect distribution.

As far as the market is concerned, see, in this category, like I was telling, out of the 3 crore customer that gets acquired, roughly around 45% of the customers are actually the customers who are moving from one operator to the other. This is month after month.

Those are the customers, which is 45%, 47% customers, are not considering me today, because probably I have an inconsistent capex, hence I had not deployed, hence my experience was not there, and so on and so forth. These are the trends that we are seeing over the period of time.

Just to give you one data point, four or five quarters back, whatever I was acquiring, I was getting 19% to 20% of my acquisition from the competition. Today, that number still stands at 43%, which means I'm able to attract customers in the market that I'm investing.

That will continue, because right now, I'm not in that consideration set for those set of customers. One, like you just saw, I have increased my coverage by 100 million from a population point of view.

Those 100 million guys were not even considering me for the longest period of time. It's not that all of them will come to me, but at least they'll start considering.

I think those are the basics that we are building on, and as I said, my distribution is a strength, and hence we'll play on the strength that is there. Don't want to comment on what competition will do.

Obviously, they have a job to do. They will do what they think is right.

All right. Thank you.

Good evening on the left. Hi.

This is Sumangal from Kotak Securities. Firstly, thanks for hosting this and inviting us.

My first question is on the AGR reassessment. One is, do we have any broad sense of the timeline when we are engaging with the government?

I know it's a problem 10 years down the line, but still. Number one.

Number two, are we also pleading with respect to some moratorium on the spectrum liabilities or some deferment there? Next on the ₹45,000 crore capex, if you could share over the next three years what sort of ramp-up or spends we are looking each year, the schedule of that, maybe an annual basis?

How much of that is dependent on the ₹25,000 crore of debt which we are looking to raise and also the timeline? Just lastly, on the ₹30,000 crore of cash EBITDA target, I believe it is FY '29 which we are looking at.

In that assumption, in your calculations, can you share what is the assumptions for ARPU and subscribers, the breakup? A broad range also would be fine.

Thank you.

Let me recollect the question that you have asked. AGR spectrum, subscriber, and the

breakup ₹45,000

crore. Let me take the AGR first.

I think we are very thankful to the Government of India, as well as the honorable Supreme Court, for taking a very decisive, conclusive stance. As far as the reassessment is concerned, as I said, the reassessment has started.

It's in full swing, I will say. The speed is very good, it's very encouraging.

We are deeply engaged at different levels, because all of these reassessment happens at different places. I would really not want to put a timeline to that or a quantum of what will happen, but we are extremely confident, because we know what we are representing, we have all the documents, we have all the proofs of what we are trying to reassess or get reassessed at.

We are extremely hopeful that whatever the outcome is, is going to be good for us. As and when it happens, we'll definitely come back and share about that.

As far as any moratorium of spectrum is concerned, I don't think we ever were representing that, neither are we doing it today. That's part of the cash flow that we have baked in, and we will be paying through our cash flow on the spectrum.

We're not really talking to the government on the spectrum moratorium or any kind of a relief on this. The third question was on the phasing of the capex of ₹45,000 crore.

At a very broad level, I'll say it'll be more skewed in the first two years, and then kind of the third year, because that's how we will want to face so that we are able to get the return faster. That's the reason I was very careful when I was saying I'll deploy my 4G 17 priority markets in 12 to 24 months.

When I said 5G, I said 12 to 30 months. We've kind of decided in our mind of how do we want to phase it.

Also, see, let's also understand and be practical about it. It's not a question of only the money that is available or not available.

It's also a question of Jagbir's team's an ability to go and execute. I don't want to kind of get into a situation where we commit something and we are not able to execute.

We are looking at an extremely aggressive deployment target, I would say, which is in the ground. This is also capital- and labor-intensive work to do.

We're being absolutely conscious of that fact as well. Sorry, have I answered all your question or something is left?

Breakup of EBITDA. Split of EBITDA growth into ARPU and customer, at a very broad level, I would say 60-40, 60 in favor of customers, 40 would be ARPU.

ARPU will obviously have an component of an upgrade, as well as if and when something happens in the industry on the price. We have always said that industry needs a price correction.

We've kind of built on that. I think larger focus is on customer and our own customers' mix changing.

As I keep saying, we have a significant amount of customers who are sitting in 2G, as and when I put the 4G or the 5G, those are the guys who are kind of moving into a different category. I need to move there.

Second is a category where I have large number of customers who have a data-enabled handset, but they are on the voice product. That's another big category for me to move, and the delta between them as an ARPU is anything between a ₹80 to ₹100.

I think those are the immediate things that we are really looking at when we put the investment and start to kind of get the return. Sorry, you were

wanting

to ask a question from long, yeah. Deepti

from CLSA. Thank you for the presentation.

You mentioned of the targets that you have, 40% is likely to come from ARPU gain. If we look at the last few years, the sector has gained from three successive tariff hikes.

The double-digit growth, nearly double of this was attributable to the ARPU growth. In your target to double or triple EBITDA or double-digit revenue growth, what if the tariff hikes are delayed?

Do you believe 60% subscriber growth can come without a market share gain and this kind of target can be met without tariff hikes?

No. Tariff hike, as I said, and you know it better, in the last six years, if you see, there have been four structural tariff hikes, okay?

Every single tariff hike has ranged from a 15% to even 100%. FY '21 was a 100% tariff when it was a 99 becoming a 199.

The last one, which is July '24, was a 20%, where it was 15% as a residual. It ranges from whatever percentage.

That's one part of it, and we are not saying that it's going to happen tomorrow or not, but yeah, we feel that the industry needs to take a call on the correction of the tariff. That's one part of it.

Second part of it is to say that when I'm looking at a 60% of this coming from the growth on the subscriber, obviously it's the customers who I need to acquire, which I'm not able to acquire. I can't really go and put the entire onus onto the ARPU.

When I'm saying ARPU, I'm saying I'm just delinking the upgrade and the price separately. Because the upgrade is in my hand, because that's the customer that belongs to me, and I can upgrade that either from a 2G to a 4G or to a 5G or from a unlimited voice to an unlimited data.

Those are two large opportunity that I see, because the mix of the base, and one of the reason why my ARPU is less is exactly this. Otherwise, my ARPU for an unlimited data customer is very similar to what the industry ARPU is.

The mix is skewed towards a non-smartphone or a non-data customer, which is where it kind of comes down.

As you target to take 5G to 100 cities, do you have a target for the 5G traffic? Because for the leader, 5G is already accounting for 50% of their traffic, and only when the traffic upgrades to 5G is there an uplift in ARPU without an explicit tariff hike.

See, as we speak, we were in 29 city till very recently. We have gone to 43 cities in the last one quarter.

In the 29 city, which includes Bombay, Delhi, other places, I think we see a pretty significant amount of traffic which is actually accruing on the 5G. Now, see, a lot of these traffic, and Jagbir can add on this, also accrues onto a 5G because it's an offload strategy, where you need a 4G and a strategy to put a site to take the traffic off of a 4G.

Had 4G been the only option, you would have put a 4G or a layer. Since you have a 5G, you're putting a site as a 5G and you're offloading a 4G on that.

It might not be a direct correlation of saying that what's the traffic on a 5G, and hence all of them kind of gets converted into a revenue for a 5G. It's a little bit of a mixed bag.

It's not a straight line transaction to say if the traffic on the 5G goes up, your revenue is going to go up.

Maybe I'll rephrase my part one of my question. Considering it takes two to three quarters for tariff hikes to flow through, what if the tariff hikes are delayed, and also this upgrade is a lot more gradual, considering that competition is also investing so aggressively in 5G, is there going to be a sort of reassessment of the target on double-digit revenue growth and 3x of EBITDA in that scenario?

I'll say double-digit revenue, we would do. That's the way we're looking at it.

3x EBITDA, probably a little marginally here or there is the way I would really look at it.

Okay. One question for Tejas.

There's a 10% difference between the AGR 877 billion at which it has been frozen versus what's booked in the accounts for your balance sheet. Also, the frozen amount is nearly $10 billion.

To what extent is the reassessment likely to bring relief, at least a broad range, what kind of relief could one expect?

Sure. Thanks.

I think on the first question, on the balance sheet, we have got about ₹80,000 crore, and the balancing difference between that 87 and 80 is sitting in contingent liability. It is there in the disclosure already.

That makes up the 80,000 plus the 7,000, so that comes to the ₹87,000. To the question of where we think this 80,000 could go down to, I think Abhijit has mentioned too premature for us to say anything.

We have the documents, the speed is ongoing, but will be premature to say a number at this point of time. Abhijit, you want to add anything?

No.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. Hi.

Good evening. This is Namit Arora from Ingrowth Capital.

Thank you for putting this together and having the entire senior leadership team here. I have a couple of questions.

One is on technology. The industry is prone to a lot of disruption.

If you could give us some color on internal investments for innovation to keep abreast of technology trends, and also internal investments to deliver any efficiencies on the cost structure, if that's possible. My question is both market facing and internal, but just your focus on technology internally.

Okay. When you ask of the technology internal, it is more to do with automation and AI other than the infrastructure that we are putting.

As I said in my presentation, and Jagbir can add on to that, the way we really look at the AI intervention is in twofold. One is on the cost reduction, and which includes the efficiency, and then is on the revenue.

In the technology side, when I look at the AI, it is primarily on the cost part of it. One of the example that I can cite is, which we have started to kind of pilot as we speak, is to look at the AI deployment onto a site to say what's the kind of power consumption that is happening, and then how do you really on a auto mode self-optimize the site of not really throwing that kind of a power, because your traffic is not there at that point in time, and hence what is the kind of cost reduction that can happen?

I think that's just one example to say. There are many more examples on the similar lines as far as the technology is concerned.

To put an amount would be difficult at this point in time to say what part of the amount will go. Yes, you're right, the way forward on the technology from an internal point of view is absolutely to look at the efficiency and the efficiency on the automation and AI.

We are absolutely committed on that. When I'm talking of an EBITDA, I'm also talking of the efficiencies that we are building in on the network opex, because if you really see the ₹45,000 crore of capex going really takes my network opex in a very different trajectory.

Some of these are absolutely baked in as far as our EBITDA is concerned. You want to add something on the AI?

I think if I can give you some concrete examples, one is the cost side, using the AI to reduce the cost, improve the productivity. You can take all the operation management of the network side as well as the IT side.

Rather than the people doing all kind of job right from the we call it L1 level to L4 level, eliminate the people and the cost actually, which machine can do it, let machine do it. We have implemented a lot of use cases in our Network Operation Center in Pune and in IT operations.

We are actually replacing the people with the machines. You do the more accurately, more efficient, less cost, and this is not talk, is already implemented.

Of course, it's like a ongoing process. It cannot be like only one time.

Same thing, we are just seeing where we can improve the productivity, could be in supply chain, could be in finance, could be in shared services. Wherever there's a benefit for the using AI to reduce the cost, we are actually taken this last one year this charter to improve the productivity, reduce the cost, use the AI as much as possible.

Other side, towards the revenue enhancement side, I think we are working right now on the churn management, etc., also. We are seeing the how AI can analyze the vast of data and can give us the real-time outcome.

This is one. Second is what Abhijit was saying in terms of innovation your question was, see, in telco world, there's a big cost on the energy.

We are doing the energy savings, whether we do through the self-optimizing network or we do the AI-led energy savings. That is one part.

Second part, we are also doing actually on the network side to do the interference management, to create the more capacity from the same infrastructure and the assets. Third, we are also doing that when we deploy the network, we do the planning in such a way, I deploy the investment and balance the investment between the 4G and 5G where we need the smart way of deployment.

It's more of the long term rather than looking for the short term. I think many ways the AI is helping us and I'm sure helping industry, but we are adopting AI very aggressively to just see wherever we can optimize our cost, that is the first priority for us.

That's very helpful. Thank you.

I just have two quick questions for Abhijit. One is on internal morale, people morale in generally within the organization, attrition, churn of people, and your ability to attract top quality talent.

Secondly, if you could just spend a couple of minutes on branding and marketing, because, as several participants before also talked of market share gains, if you are putting some renewed focus on marketing and branding, etc. You've

picked up on the favorite thing of mine, which is the employee, and that's the reason we say that employee first and customer always. There's a live event happening.

In fact, we have extended this link to all the employees, and many of them would be actually watching us live. I think the way it starts for us is being authentic and being transparent.

We genuinely believe in it. We don't only talk of the 3CTO, which is the culture, the career, and the capability.

We genuinely put in a lot of effort, and Guru can talk about it a little bit on saying, because this industry is really changing and changing very fast, especially in the case of enterprise. I think the capability investment of our employees is extremely important for them to keep pace with what's really happening in this industry, otherwise your customers will know more than what you know.

That's not a really great place to be in. That's one of the focus area.

I think from an employee morale point of view, the way we have held our team together, which one of the lowest attrition, I would say in the industry for the long period of time, making sure that every information reaches them directly like this one. I do something called a focus of the month.

I've been doing it for the last 44 months every month, month on month, where we talk of exactly what is happening in our lives so that they know and they hear from me rather than from anybody else. That's how we are building that confidence.

I'm absolutely confident of our employees of where they stand and what they need to do. Also, not only that, I'm also cognizant of the fact that the culture of ownership and performance need to be driven.

At this point of time where we stand today, we need entrepreneurs. We need ownership in the employee fraternity rather than just being an employee.

That's how we drive that agenda very, very rigorously. You want to add something on employee?

Thank you for asking that question. Let me give you some data points, which kind of will be an evidence of the question that you asked.

Let's take the ultimate measure of employee morale, attrition. FY '24, we were 16.8; FY '25, we were 16.5, lower than competition; YTD FY '26, we are 14.2.

Actually, good news travels, and everybody experiences it in a certain way, and that is directly translating into a fall in attrition or increase in retention. If I cut this in slightly different way, the average tenure of the top band in the company is 12 years, which means top leadership has stuck around.

The average tenure of the band right next to it is also about 11.8, 11.9, which kind of indirectly tells you that people who are movers and shakers really are quite embedded and quite invested in the success and future of the organization. The third dimension at which I would like to talk about is, where does morale come from?

One is, of course, it comes from a rosy view of the future, but it also comes from their experience of how much the organization is investing in them. If let's say the number of learning hours is any barometer of how much investment we make despite what we have gone through, it's up by about 30% in the last 2 years, it's up by about 45% over the last 2 years.

I think all in all, whichever way you cut your question, the real indicators are quite healthy and becoming even stronger with time.

Thank you. Abhijit, if you could just spend one minute on my last question, which was on branding and marketing, any efforts on that?

Branding and marketing, any enhanced efforts?

Branding and marketing, I think Avneesh is here. As I said, we have a brand which is really a loved brand.

It's a amalgamation of two real loved brand earlier, which is now converged into Vi. We feel that the story is incomplete, and let me confess that we need to do a little bit of work there, and that's the reason I kind of left it incomplete, because I want a right time to unveil some of that.

There's some work happening. As I said, watch for this space, and we'll come back on what we are going to do.

We are absolutely cognizant of the fact that we need to have a very compelling narrative, which I'm not talking of it right now, but we know exactly what we are going. You want to add something, or

No, I think two parts to this. One is, I think we do recognize the fact that we need to drive re-evaluation as far as the brand is concerned, right?

If you're looking to bring in incremental consumers, we will need to do that. I think as the market matures, brands do tend to get commoditized, and I think that opens up an opportunity from our standpoint to drive ourselves from a differentiation point of view, and therefore drive re-evaluation.

Without letting on more, I think just watch this space. We will get a lot more salient, we will increase our share of voice, and you should be hearing a lot more from us in the coming months.

Yeah.

Sorry, Madhu. Yeah.

Thank you very much, everyone, and all the best to the entire team.

Thank you.

Thank you

so much. Thank you.

Sincere thanks from all of us for all of you being present here and doing this meeting after a long gap. I have three parts.

One is the overall mathematics if I look, ₹49,000 crore of a spectrum payment over the next three years, ₹45,000 crore of capex, that's ₹94,000 crore. I'm assuming some payable and contingent liability will be there of the past.

To roughly ₹1 lakh crore to be invested over next three years. You said you'll take ₹35,000 crore of debt.

25 funded, 10 non-funded. Yeah.

I'm assuming that 10,000

non-funded

will ₹35,000. So, ₹65,000 crore essentially will come from internal accruals over the next three years.

Primarily, yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Just taking cue from Deepti's point, if there is a shortfall, let's say for whatever reason business is business, if there is a shortfall in EBITDA number, then will it be a call on the promoters for additional equity or it will be a call on shareholders?

I did not introduce the promoters sitting here in the room, and

Sushil can possibly address this.

Sushil, you want to come here because then probably

Thanks, Madhu. I think this is a very, very relevant question.

I think couple of points you have to kind of keep in mind. One, as a promoter, we have stood by this company all throughout.

Otherwise, we would not have been standing in front of you. Must say, brilliantly handled.

This will be a case study in Harvard. No, absolutely.

I did mention to many people that this company would be a case study at a Harvard. I would also say that Mr.

Birla particularly, specially in this company, he's the largest investor across the group what he has done for this company. I think you have to see this question in a context.

He has always remained positive and he has invested when there was a need. Tomorrow, theoretically, if there is a need, I don't think promoters will run away and will not take care of the company.

I think you have to see this question in a slightly different context. I'm

Sushil, wahi main puch raha hoon. If there is a need for equity, the promoters will come before it goes to the larger shareholder?

Madhubhai, as you know that we have invested ₹27,000 crore in last few years. That itself gives a message that if there is a need, I think promoters always have remained confident, they've invested, and they would make sure that if there is a need, they support that company.

Apart from this ₹49,000 crore spectrum which is being paid out, how much more liability is left after this?

Madhubhai,

one second, one more point. Actually, as the equity is always a costliest form of raising.

Absolutely.

I think 100%

at this price, it is very, very expensive.

I think we will keep that in mind actually.

Just to answer your question, so as we speak, as I said that we have cleared all the debt. The bank debt that is there is under 1,000 crore now, okay?

There's no other liability at all. Rather, on the contrary, there is some money that we can recover on the CLAM that I talked of and on some of the income tax return.

I was talking about spectrum liability.

There's no other spectrum and this is a

This is the ₹49,000 crore is the total?

Is the total. Yeah, 7,000, 15,000, and 27,000.

That makes it

Sorry for this ignorant question, are we paying interest on this spectrum or this is a total

We're paying interest on time. This is This is a total payment,

including the interest?

Yes. Yes.

Including the interest, right.

Yeah.

My last question is, of course, both the competitors are very, very strong. In your understanding, what are you calculating their response to be to this aggressive comeback of Vi?

I think they should welcome us with open arms. They have been having a duopoly.

We are a very formidable, strong, promoter-backed organization with extremely good, excellent execution capability, which was only not able to perform because of the AGR overhang. I think once that part is behind us, which is behind us, I think it's a three-player market.

India is a large market. I don't see that they should be worried from that point of view.

We are absolutely in the market to give them a tough competition.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you once again.

Thank you so much.

Hi. Here.

You allude to about 45%, if the number's correct, of the people who are churning between one operator to another almost regularly. You kind of suggested that it is a pattern.

Can you throw some light as to why this is happening? Because your whole strategy on acquiring more customers, this seems to be a foundational part to it.

Okay. No, let me break that into two parts.

The number is right. Out of the total number that is acquired in an industry in a month, 45% of them move into two operators.

Till now, they were primarily moving between the two operators, because some part of the market, we were not present in. That's the market that we definitely want to participate in.

The reason why they move, multiple reasons. Could be challenge on the network, could be challenge on the service, could be challenge on the offering that they're getting.

Because these are the market, we call them a category which is a rotational churn customers who are more value seekers and kind of move every month. That's a large part of the segment.

Our strategy is not only dependent on the guys who are moving. We are also looking at a category which is other than this.

Like I said, we are currently at a 43%. At best, I'll go to a 50%, which is an increase of a 7%, 8% on that.

The 50% of the market, which is a new in the category, is also what we are looking at. We are not over-indexed as far as only this category of a customer is concerned.

Yes, that's a market reality as well, that that's the kind of customer that is rotating within the operators.

Hi. Here.

Kunal from BNP Paribas. Again, coming back to the EBITDA question.

As you look to triple the EBITDA over the next three years, what's the tariff hike which you think is required to really get there? What do you think will be the industry subscriber growth over the next two, three years?

On the cost side, what's the potential? What's the plan for the weaker circles?

Is there a potential to, or would you look to exit, considering that those will be loss-making circles? On churn, the 4% monthly churn, where do you think it stabilizes?

Again, it's a big cost which you are incurring. Yeah.

Sorry, first question you asked was on the EBITDA. See, any pricing intervention we believe is a call of a leader, not a call of a challenger.

We have always maintained that the industry needs a price repair. Everybody says that.

We'll wait for the leaders to take a call on that, and then we will evaluate what do we want to do with that. That's on the pricing.

I'm not very sure what quantum of price will increase or not increase. That's on the pricing part of it.

The second question was on

Industry subscriber growth. No.

We are not planning any circle to be shut down at all. Rather, we are wanting it to strengthen them for the simple reason that the customers who are going in from a 17 market to those market, they should be able to experience the similar network experience and service experience.

Because we've seen over the period of time that if you do not have your network availability We can't go and cover everywhere. At least the places that I have a 2G site, which is pretty decent amount of coverage, at least we make them a 4G, as well as we cover all the areas which is of public interest, which is a station, airport, religious places, public interest places, so that we are present in that area.

We are not having any plans to exit. As far as the cost is concerned, large cost on this is a network cost.

When we look at the EBITDA, we also look at a overall EBITDA from a country point of view, While we look at a circle level as well, but I think from a strategic point of view, we need to have a little holistic view as far as the EBITDA is concerned. Okay.

Also if you can comment on your plans for enterprise as well as maybe postpaid, how do you see postpaid? Have you been losing customers there?

Do you think you can have a stronger pitch towards them now? Also FWA, what's the plan?

See other players have invested aggressively there. What's your strategy there?

I think postpaid, let me pick up postpaid, and then Arvind, I'll request you on to add on the enterprise part of it. Postpaid is I'll say is a turnaround business for us.

Over the last two years, we have really seen a significant amount of turnaround as far as the postpaid business is concerned. One, because we have opened the touch points.

The postpaid customer still is a discerning customer who needs a little touch and a feel. If you saw the slides, we have in the country 2,641 exclusive stores in 664 cities.

We have deployed 370-odd stores in the last probably two quarters. I think there's a fair amount of work happening as far as the touch points are concerned.

We are also available digitally, and we have an unparalleled value proposition, whether it is in shape and form of family or in shape and form of the REDX that we offer, where there are unique benefits that we offer. As I said, that business is absolutely in the positive territory.

We don't see whether it is on the revenue, whether it is on the net adds. On the enterprise, I'll request Arvind to kind of add a flavor.

It's been a critical part of our journey, and we're working pretty diligently on that. Thank you.

On enterprise, basically, as Abhijit mentioned earlier, we operate across customer segments, whether it's the large hyperscalers, large banks to even the digital startups. It's a business of a portfolio of sub-businesses, whether it's core connectivity.

Some segments are mid-single digit growth categories, whereas some segments are very high, 20%-plus categories. We are operating across all segments.

We have a very clear focus on how do we make ourselves more relevant. I think some of the last two years of quarterly earnings call also, we've given updates on whether it's as an example being the innovator and launching the rich business messaging in partnership with Google in India.

We were the first to have launched that. Whether creating new products in terms of fixed line with hybrid SD-WAN with world-class partners like Fortinet and Cisco.

How do we modernize our product portfolio? We've had a rich history and DNA of enterprise relationship building.

We have dedicated customer account directors with deep experience. A mix of operating across customer segments, modernizing our product portfolio, and increasing our TAM in some of the higher growth what we call emerging business or next-gen services, these are three pillars on which we have actually seen very strong momentum already in the enterprise business over the last four, five quarters.

Of course, the next two or three quarters, we have very strong, clear plans to take it forward. Yeah.

Sanjesh

here. Sanjesh.

I think for all this plan to come around, I think revenue is the key point. Just wanted to understand on the four key factors of the revenue.

How do you think each of the factor will play out over next three year? First is subscriber.

Industry is growing at 2.5%. We have been declining.

Now, the ambition is to grow faster than the industry for the revenue to be achieved. The second is premiumization: 2G to 4G, 4G to 5G, how it translates into revenue.

Now, again, we have seen historically, this subscriber when they were upgrading from 2G to 4G, a lot of them have moved out of the network in the want of a better quality customer. How are we going to stop that, feed that, and probably grow faster than the subscriber growth?

That's number two. Number three is tariff hike.

Now, if we go historically, the translation of tariff hike into revenue has been pretty weak for us, right, negative to at best case 20%, 25%. Now, how are we changing that, how are we working on translating the tariff hike to revenue?

That's the third part. Fourth part, obviously enterprise, what kind of contribution you see and how that it's all work out to reaching that 17%, 18% kind of a revenue CAGR?

If you can touch on all these four point, probably that will give us more clarity in terms of how to think about the revenue for Vi.

I'll take the subs question and the tariff question, and then premiumization, I'll request Avneesh to answer, and then Arvind can talk on the enterprise part. See, when we look at the subs, obviously, large part of our action is very clearly coming from a fact of the places that we are investing and we'll invest.

Yes, the answer is that we need to grow faster than the industry, and that's what the aim is. Second point is, let's also understand when you say 2% of the industry growth from a customer's point of view is another challenge of the industry, where the two players were investing, but since we were losing subscriber, the entire growth for them for the subs came from us.

That's the job that we are kind of going to do on expanding to the question that sir was asking here on saying that, how do I really participate in the area which is the MNP area as well as the outside area? Yes, the answer is that we are looking at an aggressive growth as far as the customers are concerned.

On the second question on the price, I think, if you cut that price over the last four or six years, the four times the price has changed, every single time, the ARPU gain that we have got is very similar to what other guys have got. Every time, we have got a customer loss, which is far significant, which effectively takes my revenue down.

That's the point I was making that we probably did the price up without the network experience being there. After that price, we have already invested ₹16,000 crore.

As and when the price up happens, there will be a significant amount of capex of ₹45,000 crore which would have gone, the 5G would have come, the capacity you have seen, 117,000 broadband sites we have added. All of this actually adds to the experience, and hence there's no reason if the other two operators are adding onto the ARPU and not really losing subscriber, effectively giving the return on the revenue, there's no reason for me to then kind of lose on the subscriber.

Hence, we are very pragmatic, and that's the reason I said that, as and when the price change happens, we'll evaluate and see where do we need to make that effective. You want to add something on the premiumization?

I think two or three things. One is, I think you need to recognize even today, there's a pretty significant gap between our ARPU and our competitor ARPU, and while I'm not taking names, I hope you understand the competitor I'm alluding to.

Eventually, as the mix changes, we fundamentally have a fairly large trajectory available to us in terms of headroom as far as the ARPU growth is concerned. Whether it is in terms of today, we have a, like Abhijit been saying, a significant proportion of, let's say, 2G customers, which are low-ARPU customers, we also have a larger proportion of what are called second SIM customers, right?

Eventually, at the end of the day, as the network experience consolidates, a lot of that second SIM starts converting into the primary SIM. While subscriber growth is going to be important and we are obviously, like he spoke about the fact that there as far as our mix is concerned, 60% is built on subscriber, the 40%, and I think the lady asked the question saying, what happens if that mix doesn't translate?

We fundamentally believe there is enough and more headroom and opportunity available in terms of premiumization to be able to upscale the ARPU, which is what we've been doing despite having no price repair in the last four quarters. I think, like he said, the ability to be able to hold on consumers with price increase, we obviously feel a lot more confident now given the fact that the network repair is happening, we're consolidating the experience, therefore, we will be able to build a lot of that price increase into our revenue growth as we move forward.

I think postpaid is fundamentally a very, very strong story for us. We're coming back very, very strongly as far as postpaid is concerned.

I think what we need to recognize on postpaid is largely a top 20 city story where fundamentally the experience, both in terms of the retail experience, in terms of the front-facing, consumer-facing assets that we offer, as well as the experience, where we starting to build out the 5G network, we're starting to see pretty significant gains as far as premiumization is concerned and therefore the ARPU mix. Also with a lot of the propositions that we've introduced, whether it's the Hero, Non-Stop Hero, we're seeing a large proportion of our base starting to move to these propositions where we're getting pretty significant ARPU uptake.

I think we're pretty confident as we move in the journey, the premiumization is here to stay, and that will continue to build our ARPU as we move forward, because there is enough and more headroom relative to where we stand vis-a-vis our competitors in the market today.

Just to add a bit on the enterprise side, I think the way we look at it fundamentally there is we have to protect and grow the core, which is slightly more steady, predictable, strong margin, a critical part of our cash flow, and then start aggressively moving into increase TAM and other value pools. As an example, the IoT space and the whole smart meter Digital India vision, we are talking of almost a TAM of 200 to 220 million households, which will get into this bandwagon in the next three, four years.

We have publicly announced already partnerships and MOUs that we have in our order book of 12 million, and we are actively in a situation where possibly in the next two or three months, we will be able to announce figures even higher than that. That's the kind of TAM increase from other industry pools that will happen from the new businesses.

Both the core and the new areas of business have the headway and the space for us to grow meaningfully. Sorry,

just in terms of a time check, if we can just take the last questions for the day.

Good evening. This is Aditya Suresh from Macquarie, I'm right here in the back.

Just two questions. First is in terms of just going back to your slides, you showed some stuff on Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh.

Can you disaggregate that impact, value versus volume, some of the gains which you saw as we invested in those markets?

Two parts. If you notice that in Maharashtra, it is a gain on both the value and the volume, and that's where I said that we have added or started to add customers quarter two onwards, and obviously there is an impact on the upgrade that Avneesh was explaining.

Whereas, in case of UP, we have still not got into the positive territory, where we have arrested the decline that was happening. There it is more a value gain, where we have been able to upgrade more customers, not really add customers to get that gain.

That's the simple way of really understanding the UP and Maharashtra. This will be very different for different places depending upon the place and stage of life that the circles are in.

The second clarification was, in terms of your subscriber aspirations, is there any inorganic consolidation impact to think about, whether it be BSNL or any other government entities? Or is all organic Vodafone Idea?

No, no, it's all organic. There's no consolidation or, if you're hinting towards any kind of a merger or any kind of thing, no, it's all organic going into the market, sweating it out, executing and getting the business out of the network that we put.

As you kind of execute this in three years' time, do you have any target of what this could mean for your net debt to EBITDA on an overall consolidated basis?

Net add to EBITDA?

Net debt. Net

debt.

Yeah.

You want to take that? I think net debt will be

25

I actually pointed out. I think Abhijit

partly covered it. Actually, if you look at an external debt today is fairly low.

With the ₹25,000 crore that Abhijit spoke about, even at today's ratio, we are at 1: 1 to 2.5. As we grow our EBITDA, that will be substantially lower than that.

We are looking at that range as we speak. Even if we include the non-funded, we are at 1:3.5 at today's EBITDA, which again should grow as we look at the ambition in the future.

Would you include spectrum and AGR liabilities as well because these are effectively interest-bearing?

I think, Aditya, the way to look at spectrum would be to look at whether we are able to fulfill from a cash flow point of view, and I think that Abhijit has given confidence. The reason in a way not to look at debt is the spectrum is over a significant 20-year period.

This installment is due till 2044. I think as I look at net debt to EBITDA to generate revenue and grow for the next two, three years, I'll focus on external debt while not losing the eye on ability to pay the spectrum, which we shared again earlier as well.

Thank you. All the best.

Thank you. I think there's the last question here, and then we wrap up.

Yeah. We are any which way here, we can have the conversations going on.

Yeah. Sorry, we can't hear you.

Mic up.

Sorry to persist on the revenue, double-digit revenue growth target. The competitor has a 5G SA network.

Competitor has 20% lower tariff. While I agree with the team on the postpaid side of Vodafone Vodafone being able to attract more postpaid subscribers, but how would larger subscriber gains come through because a peer does have 20% lower tariffs on 5G?

No, sorry, I don't think they have a 20% lower tariff now. Now if you see, their entry-level price is changed for them as well, I don't think that holds.

Also, one of the competition has an SA, the other has a NSA.

That competition has gained a lot more postpaid subscribers even from Vodafone Idea. The point is larger subscriber gains, would it be possible with one peer having lower tariffs and one peer being quite aggressive at ground on attracting postpaid?

The second part to this is, if the peers don't increase rates, would Vodafone Idea be willing to take tariff hikes?

That I think the second part of the question I answered, saying that the tariff increase, in a manner, is a call of a leader, not really a challenger at this point in time. That's the

I think in 2019, Vodafone Idea took the tariff hike lead, if I recall correctly.

2019 was right after the merger, which was probably we were the largest player after the merger.

Okay.

I don't think we are looking at a tariff hike on our own. It depends on how it

goes. Okay.

Then the last question from me. On this whole spectrum repayment is taken care of for three years, but thereafter, there's still a very large liability.

If government does convert, depending on the price, they could end up being 80% or more. How do promoters see this pattern where they go up from 49 to maybe above 80, and yet we are in a point where maybe even spectrum renewals will be coming up?

Yeah.

Hello. No, this was I think a related question, this I asked before.

Sorry for this repeating again. What I heard was the total spectrum payment due as of now is only ₹49,000 crore

for the next three years.

Next three years.

Yeah.

That's what I asked. What is the remaining after three years, how much is more remaining a spectrum payment?

Then that every year it is different. For the next three after the FY '29 is another 7,700, 27 for another two years, then it starts coming down because depending upon how the spectrum holding pattern is.

Overall, it's 120,000 over the next 20 years till 2040. So, 1 lakh

the ₹120,000 crore minus ₹50,000 crore for the next three years. Till 2044.

Whatever. The total repayment after we pay this ₹50,000 crore will be roughly ₹70,000 crore to be paid over the next 16 years.

Right?

Not 16 years, 20 years.

Three years is passed by. Now, I'm assuming three years.

From '29,

yeah. From '29, it is 16.

Yeah, 2044. That's right.

Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah.

Maybe I just want to clarify that government I don't think will increase their ownership beyond 49%. I don't think we should assume that they'll go 80% or 75%.

I think cabinet earlier when they had approved this 49%, there is a clause which suggests that in case company raises more equity capital and government drops from 49% to whatever percentage depending on what company has raised, they reserve a right for further converting obligations into equity up to 49%. That's the way you should read.

Sushil-bhai,

just on this related thing,

yeh

jo payment hai spectrum ka, does it include the interest payment? Is it inbuilt?

This is inbuilt. There is no over and above interest payment.

No, no, no, no. Absolutely.

Total liability is ₹120,000 crore if spread over the next 20 years.

That's right.

Over the next three years, ₹49,000 crore to be paid.

Yes.

For the remaining next 16 years, another ₹70,000 crore to be paid.

Provided we don't renew some of the spectrum, which will come. That's a different issue.

That's a different.

Absolutely correct understanding.

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you.

I think we are all here. We'll kind of meet all of you one-on-one.

Thank you all for coming in and spending time. It means a lot to us.

I think we've kind of just come out of the phase of the largest overhang, and we as a team are kind of standing here committing ourselves to the target that we've taken. Thank you all for joining in, and we'll join you all.

Thank you.