Bharti Airtel's plans to increase data services revenues from 12 per cent to 50 per cent

India’s mobile internet users are growing year-on-year. According to an Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) report which came out in January, India would have **185 million mobile Internet users by June 2014** . But according to telecom operator Airtel, their revenue from data services is at a measely 12 per cent, said the company’s chief product officer Anand Chandrasekaran at the Code/Mobile conference in California. “For every operator in the U.S., 50 percent of their revenue is from data. Part of my journey is getting that 12 percent to 40 or 50, through 4G and apps and other use cases users love,” said Chandrasekaran at the conference. According to Chandrasekaran, only 10 to 15 per cent of the over 900 million mobile phone users in India have ever tried using mobile internet. [caption id=“attachment_233069” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Airtel Wynk is a music streaming service which charges Rs 29/month[/caption] Chandrasekaran said that Airtel had a three-pronged strategy to approach that issue - rolling out 4G networks, getting users hooked on to apps and helping customers visualise the data they are using. To explain visualisation, he gave an example whereby someone who has 100 minutes of talktime and uses only 20 minutes, knows he has 80 minutes left. But with data services, you do not have a definite idea of how much service say a 100MB plan can give you or when that will run out. In terms of apps, he mentioned about bundled apps. Airtel has in the past offered  **free Facebook access to prepaid customers** , and more recently partnered with Facebook to bring  **free Internet to Zambia** as part of the Internet.org portfolio, which it plans to replicate in certain Indian villages as well. Chandrasekaran also spoke about Airtel’s own music streaming app called Wynk  which was downloaded by over a lakh subscribers within a week of its launch. It has managed to get around a million users in two months. This despite it being a paid service, charging users Rs 29/month. One of Airtel’s three-fold strategy will surely concentrate on more such app-related services which will help it earn some revenue. As of now Airtel offers 4G in about 15 cities and it plans to expand nationwide in the next four to six months. This according to Chandrasekaran will help enable people to use more data services. He also touched upon the increase in smartphone adoption as being the key driver of increase in data services. Google’s Android One initiative also got a mention, but Chandrasekaran said that it would be too early to say how the Android One game would play out. Disclaimer: Reliance Jio which is in competition with Airtel is owned by Reliance, which also owns Network18 (publisher of Firstpost)