A famous literary genius once said that every leader needs to look once in a while to make sure that he has enough followers. However, when Bharti Airtel, the clear market leader of Indian telecom sector looked back it found that it is left way behind in taking initiatives to woo new customers. And if that was not enough, then much to the surprise of market watchers, it has adopted the pricing strategy that other players have introduced in the past, case in these point being the charging calls per second strategy introduced by new entrant Tata DOCOMO at later lapped up by MTS, Aircel and Vodafone. It is noteworthy that there are players like Reliance Communication(Flat 50 paise call” and Tata Indicom per call billing as opposed to time based billing)that have dared to be different and not introduced a per second billing plan.

Earlier in the year, Idea Cellular took the lead slashing STD rates and surprisingly even at that time Airtel on its part had just matched idea`s offer and its managers were of the opinion that telecom has become a saturated sector and there are many business related problems like lack of spectrum that are hampering the growth of even established players in the segment.

Till date the Indian Telecom sector has just played on pricing to attract to attract new customers rather than offering any other clear differentiation. Even established ones are not doing anything more than just matching up the prices offered by the other players. Sadly, the problem for Airtel intensifies because of congestion in its network, which seems to be getting worse by the day. Although new players n the GSM arena like RCcom too have net work problem but then we are talking about the leader out here

“Yes bank” may have registered 20 percent of growth in revenues till September 2009 when the entire banking industry was reeling under slowdown blues, it still lags way behind others when it comes to retail penetration .The chief executive officer of YES bank is equally aware of this and has clearly crafted plans in place to turn this challenge into a lucrative opportunity. This was palpable when the company rolled out 50 outlets and unveiled its plans to add 50 more outlets by 2009 end.

Yes Bank even rolled out a TVC showing plant growing But there`s more to it as the CEO is sending a plant to all the stake holder of the company. As he points out that the belief of Yes bank is based on the fact that the stakeholders are the most important factor in their growth and they are the reason behind Yes banks success today. But the thing to look forward to is whether a money plant would be able to convey the retail penetration of Yes bank. Nevertheless, Yes bank has dared to be different.