Case study · Telecom · Risk & compliance
85,000 SIMs a day — under constant regulatory fire.
Across 18 years and one of the most volatile periods in Indian telecom, CPG ran the operational backbone behind Airtel's Karnataka business: documents, collections, credit risk and compliance, at hyper-scale.
Executive summary
When growth itself becomes the risk.
Airtel launched in Bangalore in 1998 with modest sales and blitzscaled to a peak of 85,000 SIM cards a day. That explosive growth — colliding with stringent government regulation — created enormous financial risk. CPG served as Airtel's primary operational partner for 18 years, managing the end-to-end lifecycle of subscriber documents, payment collections and credit risk. Proprietary risk-rating technology and a 120-office field network cut onboarding costs by 60% and turned regulatory penalties that once reached tens of millions of rupees a month into a rounding error.
The challenge
Growth-critical bottlenecks, all at once.
Rapid expansion across Karnataka ran into a wall of operational friction — any one of which could have throttled growth or triggered penalties.
- Activation lag. Manual auditing meant a SIM took ~48 hours to activate.
- Collections at scale. Daily checks surged from 100 to 25,000, cash to ₹10M/day — with reconciliation chaos.
- Regulatory penalties. From 2006 the DoT penalised operators for non-compliant KYC, sector-wide.
- Credit & fraud risk. "Hit-and-run" postpaid users and sophisticated card fraud.
- Legacy data debt. ~70M physical documents over 12 years needed re-verification.
The solution
Innovation through verification and technology.
CPG modernised the backend and managed financial exposure on four fronts.
- 01Integrated check management & financial governance
A proprietary check-lifecycle app, built in a record two days, ensured daily collections from 2,000+ centers were reconciled against master databases by a midnight deadline. CPG also took over reconciliation of 20+ bank accounts — surfacing systemic banking errors and uncovering a ₹25M credit-card fraud scheme.
- 02Customer Point Verification & risk rating
Mandatory physical visits to home and workplace, scored by a proprietary creditworthiness app. Rather than rejecting risky applicants, CPG advised exposure limits — a ₹500 limit instead of ₹2,500 — pioneering a risk-based approach later adopted across other circles.
- 03The compliance project
An 18-month cleanup of 70M legacy documents to meet DoT guidelines, combining call centers and "feet on the street" to re-engage customers. The entire base was digitised; only 200,000–300,000 customers were deactivated, preserving the vast majority of revenue.
- 04Real-time activation technology
A mobile app digitised the audit process, letting field agents upload images and data directly — slashing SIM activation from 48 hours to 30 minutes and lifting Airtel's market share.
The impact
The numbers that reached the boardroom.
Standardised metrics
Before CPG, and after.
| Metric | Pre-CPG | With CPG |
|---|---|---|
| SIM activation time | 48 hours | 30 minutes |
| Monthly DoT penalties | Tens of millions ₹ | Thousands ₹ |
| Onboarding cost / customer | ₹150 | ₹60 |
| Peak sales volume | 100–200 units / day | 85,000 SIMs / day |
| Daily revenue realisation | ₹350,000 | ₹25M+ |
| Operational infrastructure | Localised | 120 offices, statewide |
Business value
Beyond operations — strategic impact.
- Cost leadership. Automation and process efficiency cut per-customer onboarding cost by 60%.
- Operational scale. 600+ direct and 500+ indirect staff ran the field infrastructure, freeing Airtel to focus on technology and growth.
- Regulatory resilience. Twelve years of legacy data made compliant, without significant customer loss.
- National recognition. CPG was named a National Vendor and won multiple "Best Vendor" awards, expanding across South India.
"We partnered with CPG through one of the most volatile periods in Indian telecom — regulatory shifts and market expansion all at once. CPG matched our pace, managed the complexity, and became a genuine part of our growth story. That's rare."
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