Eight telecom companies, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, the biggest three in the country, bid a combined Rs 61,162 crore (Rs 611.62 billion) in the spectrum auction held earlier this month.

The Canadian smartphone maker in October last year launched BBM for rival Android- and iOS-based handsets and the app since then has been downloaded on over 40 million such handsets.