SP Shukla, the chief executive of Reliance Communications’ mobile division, chuckles when asked about complaints from rivals about his aggressive marketing campaigns to win new subscribers.

In the first quarter of this year, India’s second-largest mobile operator launched a special offer that it called the “customer experience programme”. This gave new subscribers a virtually free Sim card, Rs10 (20 cents) a day of free minutes for 90 days, and free calls late at night on Reliance’s recently launched network based on the global system for mobile communications (GSM) standard.