Idea Cellular
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| Public Limited Company : : IDEA |
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| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 1994 |
| Headquarters | Mumbai, India |
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Key people
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Kumar Mangalam Birla (chairman) |
| Products | Mobile telephony, wireless broadband |
| Revenue | ₹354 billion (US$5.3 billion) (2016) |
| ₹31.92 billion (US$470 million) (2015) | |
| Members | 160.08 million (June 2015) |
| Parent |
Aditya Birla Group (49.05%) Axiata Group Berhad (19.96%) Providence Equity (10.6%) |
| Website | www |
Idea Cellular (commonly referred to as simply Idea, and stylised as !dea) is an Indian mobile network operator based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Idea is a pan-India integrated GSM operator offering 2G,3G and 4G mobile services. Idea is India’s third largest mobile operator by subscriber base, After Vodafone India. Idea has 182 million subscribers as of 31 December 2015.
During its inception in 1995, Aditya Birla Group, Tata Group and AT&T Wireless each held one-third equity in the company. Following AT&T Wireless' merger with Cingular Wireless in 2004, Cingular decided to sell its 32.9% stake in Idea. This stake was bought by the remaining two stakeholders equally. Tata forayed into the cellular market with its own subsidiary, Tata Indicom, a CDMA-based mobile provider and in April 2006, Aditya Birla Group announced the acquisition of the 48.18% stake held by Tata Group at INR 40.51 a share amounting to INR 44.06 billion with 15% of the stake acquired by Aditya Birla Nuvo and the remaining by Birla TMT holdings Private Ltd. both AV Birla family owned companies. Malaysia based Axiata bought a 19.96% stake in the company in 2009.
Idea competes with other major mobile operators including Airtel, Vodafone, BSNL, Reliance Communications, Aircel, Telenor and Tata DoCoMo. While Idea competed very closely with the then smaller operators like Reliance Communications, BSNL, Tata, Aircel in circa 2006-07, as of 31 Dec 2015, Idea has gone far ahead of the rest of these competitors clocking a Revenue Market Share of over 18.5% while the rest remain below 9%. Over the last 3 years, Idea has cornered an incremental Revenue Market Share of 33% giving tough competition to market leaders Airtel and Vodafone by earning 1/3rd of the incremental market - way above its fair share of the market.
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Wikipedia