It has been a year since you became the CEO of the International Group. How have you found it, given that you come from a different background?
Arthur: There has never been a dull moment! The International Group works with our regional associates in Asia and Africa, high growth markets with large millennial populations whose digital lifestyles are driving explosive data traffic growth. It’s a region that is truly mobile-first in that the first ‘cinema’ experience of the younger set may well be via mobile streaming. And while many may not have credit cards or bank accounts, they definitely have a mobile subscription and increasingly, a mobile wallet.
FY 2018 was a challenging year for Airtel which faced intense competition in India sparked by an aggressive new operator. While we expect pricing pressures in India to continue in the near term, we expect the resultant consolidation and more rational pricing to lead to a healthier, more stable market structure.
We take a long-term view of our strategic investments in Airtel and our other associates. All of them are strong leaders in their respective markets and they’ve successfully differentiated themselves through continuous investments in networks and spectrum and innovation to deliver a better customer experience.
This certainly puts each of our associates in a strong position to navigate competition and ride the digital wave even as capex intensity grows as we shift from 3G to 4G to 5G.
Coming from a non-telco background, I believe I can bring a fresh perspective and new ideas to the role. With my finance background, I can balance commercial entrepreneurship with financial rigour.
The telco industry has seen disruptive changes in the last few years. How is Singtel continuing to lead the associates?
Arthur: I don’t see our role as “leading” our associates. We are partners and bring together the strength of the pack as we go out and hunt for opportunities.
Today, our competition is not just traditional telcos, but digital players like OTTs too. So we have to up our game and play in that league as well. Our mindset has moved beyond local for many years now, especially since borders have eroded as the world’s gone digital.
We’ve evolved from a telco to a communications technology company with the shift from voice to data. We continue to identify new ways to use our assets to develop new revenue streams, especially in the digital space where scale is critical to any company’s success. We certainly have that scale with our customer base of more than 650 milllion across 21 countries.
Our focus is to leverage this scale to build an ecosystem of digital services for our customers through strategic partnerships. Such partnerships can create a huge network effect. We want to engage with customers, increase customer touchpoints and mindshare. I’m keen to increase not just monthly active users but also daily active users.
What are some of the opportunities you see for the Group?
Arthur: Digital services are a big part of our customers’ lives which is why we’ve identified opportunities in cross-border payments and content. All our associates, ourselves included, already offer mobile wallet services so we’re simply leveraging the strength of the pack through an interoperable platform to enable our customers to pay with their mobile wallets when they travel in Asia. It’s secure and convenient. We also want to connect with the millennials by engaging them with video and new forms of content such as esports, mixed martial arts and much more. Our recent collaborations with Razer and ONE Championship will help us to do just that.
Tell us more about this cross-border payments initiative.
Arthur: There’s been a proliferation of mobile wallet services in Asia but these wallets don’t connect with one another across borders. We saw an opportunity to address this gap by connecting all the mobile wallet services of the Group.
We’re linking Singapore and Thailand first in the third quarter of 2018. Then we’ll progressively connect the rest of our markets and potentially other telco and non-telco mobile payment apps including those of our Bridge Alliance partners and even non-telco partners.
With intra-Asia travel on the rise, this will truly empower travellers of each country to transact safely and easily with their mobile wallets and help small local merchants widen their reach to millions more in the process. We believe this will unlock the growth potential of mobile payments in the region and support ASEAN’s vision of a more connected community.
You mentioned esports as another area of focus. How does Singtel view esports?
Arthur: I’m a casual and occasional gamer but I’ve recently started watching esports. At first, I wondered why so many young people would watch someone else play a video game. But it isn’t too different from watching traditional sports like football or basketball with many intense moments of action that has drawn a similarly huge following worldwide.
That’s why such new forms of sports are a very natural next step for us. This is not just in terms of content, but also to grow a vibrant esports ecosystem and community in Southeast Asia which will help us excite and engage millennials even more. We’re gearing up for this in the next few months, so stay tuned!