By IANS,
New Delhi : Telecom service provider Vodafone has earned a revenue of about $1.49 billion (Rs.6,639.7 crore) for the first quarter of the 2010-11 fiscal from its India operations, the UK-based company said in a statement Friday.
The earnings mark an 8.9 percent rise over $1.37 billion or Rs.6,096.7 crore revenue in the like period of the last fiscal, ending June 30, 2010, it added.
The customer base during the quarter under review also increased by 28.8 percent, Vodafone said.
The company said it has increased the number of data (internet and other services) customers to 26 million till June 30, 2011, a year-on-year increase of 189 percent.
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) figures, Vodafone had 139.43 million customers in the country till May 2011.
“The growth was driven by the increase in data-enabled handsets and the continued impact of marketing campaigns run in conjunction with the sponsorship of key sporting events,” the statement added.
The company said it had gone in for promotional offers rather than get into a tariff war and thus had been successful in stabilising the effective rate per minute.
For its entire global operations, the telecom giant reported an increase of 3.5 percent at $16.8 billion in revenues, led by growth in emerging markets like India.
Some of the company’s best performing markets in terms of revenue growth included Turkey (32.1 percent), India (16.8 percent) and South Africa (7.8 percent).