Vodafone Gujarat aiming to add M-Pesa customers

M-Pesa, a money transfer service, has a pan-India distribution network of 85,000 agents and more than 2.5 mn customers

Vodafone's Gujarat circle is betting on adding new service providers including Torrent Power and several direct-to-home (DTH) service providers as billers on its M-Pesa platform soon, to boost the number of M-Pesa customers it currently has over the next few months.

M-Pesa is basically a money transfer service from Vodafone, with a pan-India distribution network of 85,000 agents and more than 2.5 million customers. Vodafone claims that it is the largest banking correspondent in the country. In Gujarat Vodafone at the moment has around 100,000 M-Pesa customers and it has seen nearly 9 times growth in M-Pesa transaction value.

As Jayesh Gadia, business head, Gujarat circle of Vodafone West Ltd said that there is huge offtake in migratory labour belts like Surat etc. "Many from Gujarat send money to Orissa, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The money transfer value is about Rs 100 crore from Gujarat at the moment," he said.

At the same time, Vodafone's data usage has seen a 70 per cent growth in the last one year in Gujarat and the number of 3G customers has nearly doubled to 2 million users. The company said that it has added over 1800 new 3G sites in 2014, extending the coverage to 300 new towns in the circle.

It has for that matter, activated 2,300 new 3G and 2G sites all over the state at an investment of Rs 700 crore.

It has around 6.1 million mobile internet users in Gujarat.