Helped by an increased customer base, British telecom giant Vodafone Group today posted a 6.3% growth in its India business revenue to 1.02 billion pounds for the third fiscal quarter.
Vodafone India had a revenue of 963 million pounds during the October-December quarter in 2010, Vodafone Group Plc said in a statement.
Its India business outperformed Vodafone's overall global revenue, which fell by 2.3% to 11.61 billion pounds for the quarter ended December 31, 2011.
"Service revenue in India grew by 20% driven by an increase in the customer base, and 46.4% growth in data revenue," the company added.
As of December 31, 2011, Vodafone India has 31.2 million data customers.
"Whilst the market remains highly competitive, the effective rate per minute increased slightly compared to second quarter following the penetration of recent price rises into the customer base," the company said.
Last month, the Group had received a favourable judgment from the Indian Supreme Court in respect of the tax case regarding the acquisition of Vodafone India Ltd in 2007.
Vodafone Plc, however, posted third quarter results slightly below forecasts on Thursday as increasingly tough trading in Spain and Italy overshadowed solid performances in emerging markets and northern Europe for the world's largest mobile operator.
Vodafone said group organic service revenue, which comes from the provision of ongoing services to customers, was up 0.9%, compared with an analyst forecast of 1.1%.
European organic service revenue was also worse than expected, down 1.7% as the huge financial constraints on consumers in Italy, Spain and Greece pulled down otherwise solid performances in the two big northern markets of Britain and Germany.
Analysts had been expecting Europe to be down by 1.4%. Spain and Italy were both particularly weak, down 8.8% and 4.9% respectively.
Balancing that out, growth within the other faster-growing division of Africa, West Asia and Asia Pacific, known as AMAP, was up 7.6%, solid but still below the forecast of 8.3%.
"Despite the further deterioration of the southern European economic environment during the quarter, our broad geographic mix is delivering a resilient overall performance," Chief Executive Vittorio Colao said.
The group did not make any change to its outlook for the full-year.
