According to Indian law, no operator can hold more than 10% stake in two companies that are competing with each other in the same circle or region. Tata Teleservices, with a national footprint, was a clear competitor of Idea. When the Aditya Birla group formally complained to the Telecom Ministry about this conflict of interest as well as violation of law, the Tata group dismissed the complaints as misleading and insisted that it was not violating any norms or laws. Idea, as a company, was the clear loser in this tug of- war between Kumar Mangalam Birla and Ratan Tata and couldn’t expand its subscriber base as rapidly as other telecom companies like Airtel, Hutch and Reliance Infocom.
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2006
An IIPM and Management Guru Professor Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative
