Tata Teleservices in a new avatar called Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS)

CIOReviewIndia Team | Tuesday, 25 May 2021, 05:03 IST

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Tata Teleservices in a new avatar called Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS)Tata Sons is reviving telecom entity Tata Teleservices in a new avatar called Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS), which will cater to small and medium enterprises.

The revamped company will also support Tata Electronics, which was created to tap the SME segment, and its SuperApp digital platform, which will bring its several consumer services together.

TTBS has launched Smartflo, a cloud-hosted communication platform targeting SMEs that have a hybrid work culture where people work from home and remote locations. Smartflo can be accessed through mobile phones and desktops.

Tata Sons had written off its investment of Rs 28,600 crore in Tata Teleservices in 2020. The consumer mobile business was transferred to Bharti Airtel but the enterprise segment was not merged with Tata Communications. The company is being rebranded now to tap the SME sector.

Tata Communications caters primarily to large enterprises. India is estimated to have about 63 million small and medium enterprises.

TTBS will provide services including intelligent call routing, call monitoring and an option for a dashboard to check the number of inbound and outbound calls. The service can be used for banking, insurance, manufacturing, ecommerce, healthcare, fintech and SMEs, which deal with customers in large numbers.

Tata Sons has cleaned up the financial mess in the entity and will resume operations on a clean slate, top officials aware of the development stated.

The holding company has put together a top team comprising of officials from Tata Teleservices, Tata Sons and Tata Communications to drive the initiative, a senior official said.

Harjit Singh Chauhan, president of the enterprise business at Tata Teleservices, is heading the revamped entity, which is also looking at the 5G space, where it will offer services to other telecom operators.

“Perhaps the most important part for 5G services will be the enterprise segment. Anybody who concentrates their resources towards that segment is following a sound approach. Its success will also depend on the timing and results of the auction of 5G spectrum as well as how the subsequent market plays out,” stated Mahesh Uppal, director at Com First, a telecom consultancy.

In 2020, Tata Sons made provisions of Rs 16,439 crore for its closed telecom business, taking the total amount written off to almost Rs 60,000 crore.

Tata Teleservices took a hit after its three licences were among those cancelled by the Supreme Court in 2012 for irregularities in spectrum allocations. Later, the company got into a legal spat with its partner NTT Docomo, which decided to withdraw.

Eventually, Reliance Jio’s entry in 2016 and a tariff war led the Tatas to sign a pact with Bharti Airtel to hive off the consumer mobile business of Tata Teleservices without any debt transfer.

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