Vi leans on store selling, bundles and network upgrades to restart subscriber growth
Vodafone Idea has regained subscribers since February, reaching about 195 million users, aided by retail-store promotions, celebrity marketing, discounted data plans and family bundles. But its six-month additions of roughly 700,000 trail Airtel’s 22 million and Jio’s 14 million, keeping retention, ARPU and network quality central to its FY27 recovery plan.
What happened
Vodafone Idea (Vi) · Vodafone Idea is using retail-store selling, celebrity marketing, discounted data plans and family bundles to regain subscribers. Vi has
Key facts
- 195 million subscribers currently
- Vi added about 700,000 subscribers in the six months to July
- Airtel added 22 million subscribers in the six months to July
- Jio added 14 million subscribers in the six months to July
- BSNL added 250,000 subscribers in the six months to July
- The Ken visited at least eight Vi retail outlets
Why this matters
Vi’s reliance on retail promotions, family bundles and network upgrades highlights potential partnership opportunities in distribution, device financing, content and infrastructure, but its weaker scale limits bargaining power.
What to watch
- Monthly mobile subscriber additions and mobile-number-portability inflows versus Airtel and Jio.
- Vi's active-user ratio, 90-day recharge retention and gross-to-net addition conversion after promotional campaigns.
- ARPU movement, postpaid additions and family-plan attachment rates.
- Evidence that network upgrades are improving coverage, data speeds and complaint volumes in high-priority circles.
- Capex deployment pace, vendor execution and financing availability for 4G/5G expansion.
- Whether promotional acquisition increasingly comes from primary-SIM port-ins rather than low-value secondary SIMs.
- Retail store productivity metrics: activations per outlet, port-in share, retention-adjusted acquisition cost and recharge conversion.
- Concentrate store-led acquisition in circles where network upgrades are already complete or imminent, rather than using national discounting.
- Shift store incentives from gross activations to 90-day retention, recharge frequency, family-plan attachment and postpaid conversion.
- Use family bundles to migrate single-SIM households into multi-line relationships, increasing switching friction and reducing churn.
- Pair celebrity campaigns with localized network-proof messaging, including neighborhood-level 4G/5G availability and in-store speed demonstrations.
- Expand retailer and company-store capability for SIM porting, handset financing and digital onboarding to reduce friction against Jio and Airtel.
- Protect ARPU by limiting deep discounts to targeted win-back and port-in cohorts, with step-up pricing after introductory periods.