Back in mid-2000, Mobile phones were starting to take over but high call charges still
restricted the users from talking long hours and many small cities in various corners of India
did not have the luxury of STD services which also had a drawback of incurring huge upfront
cost on both the caller and the receiver. Residents from small cities and town had to make a
visit to the nearest PCOs after 8 in evening when STD rates were relatively lower. Another
challenge of using PCO services were long queues because this was the time everyone post
work wanted to reach out and have a conversation with their near ones. The problem only
magnified in small cities where the number of booths were not in proportion to the
population that turned out in huge numbers to avail the services.
I spent two years of my childhood in Bikaner a small city in northwest state of Rajasthan
because of my father’s posting. During those two years he was in a public sector bank and
had to travel extensively across various parts of India for long duration which in turn kept
him and our extended family away from us. Using PCO services was a means to stay
connected but given that Bikaner was still an underdeveloped area the booths were at a
considerable distance from our locality and safety was an issue for my mother who I
accompanied when we ventured out for the late evening STD calls. Around this point of time
“Idea Cellular” constructed a bunch of outlets and came up with various long-distance plan
and slashed the call prices which made calling not only affordable and hassle free but also
easy to understand for technologically handicapped through help available in these outlets.
Idea and Aditya Birla group through their Integrity (in terms of benefitting and having
customer oriented approach), Commitment(delivering on promise of connecting various
parts across India), Passion, Seamlessness(by reaching out to the last mile user in various
corners of country) and Speed(a faster than ever before network) helped in eliminating
hindrance and helped us connect to our near ones at the press of a button. “An idea indeed
changed our life” for the better.
#NMIMSMumbai #ABGLPWooME
