That signified a growth of about 18,000 to 20,000 per month, the company claimed. ``It took Airtel 36 months to touch 2 lakh from 1 lakh and BPL 18 months to do the same. We have done it in just 10 months,'' said Burman. Escotel's present installed base, however, makes it the fourth largest player after Airtel, Hutchison Max and BPL. ``But this also means that we have carved out a 16 per cent share of the total cellular base of the country and as much as a 26 per cent of the total subscriber base in the circles,'' he added. According to the company's executive director and chief executive officer Manoj Kohli, Escotel hopes to turn in an even better performance in the second quarter ending September 2000. ``We expect our base to swell to 3.35 to 3.5 lakh by the end of the current fiscal year. By September-end itself, we will touch 2.25 lakh. In July alone, we have added 18,000 new customers. This incidentally also justifies my belief that circles will grow much, much faster than metros in the future. But whilecircles are growing at 19 per cent, we are still growing faster at 26 per cent,'' said Kohli. To retain its burgeoning base, Escotel has embarked on `customer care differentiation'. ``Customer service in general is quite weak in India. We want to build a culture of service and emerge as the leader in this respect at least within our industry,'' said Kohli.

As a first step towards this, Escotel on Wednesday announced a tie-up with the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow to set up a Center for Excellence in customer relations management (CRM) at its campus. As part of the deal, IIM Lucknow and Escotel will jointly focus on the dissemination and sharing of knowledge and experience in CRM areas. Kohli said Escotel will also fund a `CRM chair' at IIM Lucknow and provide the faculty and students with access to its own training, research and ongoing commercial projects. The creation of this chair also entails an exchange of knowledge between Escotel and IIM Lucknow in the form of ready access to Escotel offices and customer databases for conducting research on CRM-related areas by IIM Lucknow faculty and research students.

``The other initiatives will include research on the various dimensions of CRM in various industry segments and networking with universities around the world to create a knowledge base on CRM, including Indian case studies,'' according to Kohli.