Vodafone India posts 13% rise in service revenues

GSM operator Vodafone India Ltd (VIL), the country's second largest mobile operator by subscribers, posted a 13 per cent rise in service revenue for the year ended March at Rs37,606 crore, helped by customer additions and growth in data revenues. VIL had posted Rs33,281.8 crore in service revenues during the previous financial year.

India is now the third largest contributor to Vodafone Group's service revenues and operating free cash flow (OFCF), rising from the fourth slot last year.

Vodafone India, a subsidiary of British telecom major Vodafone Group, has posted a 34.5 per cent rise in OFCF at Rs8,466.4 crore against Rs6,294.1 crore the previous fiscal.

''We continue to show healthy double digit revenue growth driven by price hardening measures, robust growth in data and a rising base of quality subscribers. Maintaining our focus on profitable growth has led to significant improvement in operating margins and strong cash flows,'' said Marten Pieters, managing director and chief executive officer of Vodafone India.

''With the nationwide rollout of M-Pesa, our thrust on leveraging mobile technology to drive financial inclusion has also gathered momentum,'' he added.

According to the company, data accounts for 13 per cent of total revenues for the Indian unit, as its data users grew 39 per cent to 52 million from 37.3 million at the end of fiscal 2014. Of this, 3G users increased to 7 million, more than double the 3.3 million 3G connections reported at the end of March 2013.

The company's average revenue per user rose 28 per cent in FY14 to Rs65 from Rs51 in FY13, and data revenue grew 72 per cent to Rs3,436.9 crore in FY14.

Vodafone India ended the year with a base of 166.6 million customers serviced through a network of over 119,700 total sites, of which 22,400 are combined (2G+3G) sites.