Vodafone India boosts 1H revenue by 5.9%

Vodafone India has reported solid revenue growth for the first half of its financial year despite parent company Vodafone’s decision to take a €5 billion ($5.36 billion) writedown of its Indian operations.

Service revenue for the first half increased 5.9% to 225.79 billion rupees ($3.32 billion), with mobile data revenue up 18.8% to 46.17 billion rupees.

The operator crossed the 200 million customer milestone during the period, with a 6.7% year on year growth in subscribers to 200.7 million. Vodafone India is the market’s second largest by subscribers after Bharti Airtel.

Vodafone’s network in India meanwhile grew to around 140,000 cell sites, with a little over half of these being 3G or 4G sites.

The operator had a revenue market share for the quarter of 22.5% during the first quarter, up 0.6 percentage points year-on-year. But the company reported a service revenue ARPU during the second quarter of just 186 rupees, reflecting the tight competition in the market.

With the entry into the Indian market of Reliance Jio Infocomm, these competitive pressures are only getting worse.

In light of this, Vodafone Group has written down the value of its Indian business by €5 billion as the company braces for an expected significant revenue impact.