Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s largest telecommunications services provider, today announced the launch of Happy Hours for its prepaid customers. An industry first innovation, Happy Hours allows Airtel pre-paid customers to get 50 per cent data back for all in-app content downloads scheduled between 3.00 am and 5.00 am. E.g. If a customer schedules a video download of 100 MB then 50 MB will be credited back to his/her account.
Any App developer can integrate with Airtel Happy Hours in four simple steps and give their users the option to automatically schedule downloads between 3.00 am and 5.00 am so their users get 50 per cent data back on downloads. Developers do not have to pay Airtel for using this feature for their apps. A full API integration kit is available to developers on sign-up at www.airtel.in/happyhours.
The product was also showcased to developers at the Great Indian Developers Summit (GIDS) earlier this year and received positive feedback. YouTube and FastFilmz have integrated the product on their Apps and more partners are expected to follow.
Happy Hours feature can be accessed by customers by following a few simple steps. For example, on YouTube, an Airtel pre-paid customer needs to choose the Smart Offline option on his/her favourite videos and select ‘Save overnight with Airtel Happy Hours’ to automatically save the video between 3.00 am and 5.00 am with 50 per cent data back.
App developers benefit from Happy Hours through more in-app scheduled content downloads, while app users benefit as they can schedule their non-urgent and heavy downloads like videos, photo albums, music albums etc. without having to stay up and making 50 per cent savings on data.
“Happy Hours is yet another innovation from Airtel and a win-win proposition for both customers and developers. While customers get the benefit of convenience & value, developers can look forward to higher in-app content uptake. We invite all app developers to leverage this innovative product,” said Ajai Puri, Director – Operations (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel.
“In addition, we hope that this will have a positive impact on the overall network experience during the day/peak-hours as Happy Hours can help shift some of the non-urgent data traffic to non-peak hours and help reduce congestion.”
Happy Hours is available to all Airtel pre-paid customers by default and does not require an opt-in. The data back will be credited to customers after 6.00 am every day. Data consumed on all regular prepaid data packs, except discounted night products such as double data packs, will be eligible for the 50 per cent data back. In case a customer does not have a data pack, a discounted volume based charge of 0.4 Paisa/10Kb will apply during Happy Hours.