The Bharti group has won the "Voice & Data Top Cellular Service Provider" for the year 2000-01. The award was received by Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and group managing director, Bharti Enterprises. The first private company in the country to start telecom services, Bharti today offers cellular services in Delhi, Karnataka, AP, Chennai, HP, and Calcutta, and currently has about 15 lakh subscribers. Receiving the award, Sunil Bharti Mittal said that "telecom has not really been affected by the current slowdown, as the cellular industry is adding about 2.5 lakh subscribers every month. In fact I expect cellular to grow at the rate of about 10 lakh subscribers every month, starting next year".
Giving away the award, Pradeep Gupta, CMD of Cyber Media (I) Ltd, said that "These awards were announced on-line, which was something that was done for the first time in the country, by NASSCOM chief Kiran Karnik and it has been very well received by the industry." Voice&Data, India's largest selling communications business magazine, gives these awards in 13 areas of communications including cellular, basic, ISP, VSAT, telecom cables, telecom infrastructure equipment, networking equipment, and network integration services.
About the impending IPO, Mittal said that financial institutions are flush with funds, and fund managers are loooking where to put the money. For us , IPO is not the end but the beginning". It is expected that Bharti will launch its basic services in Haryana around 27th of December, and Delhi in the month of February. The Haryana launch has been delayed primarily due to inter-connect problems with BSNL. The company has recieved the numbering plan today, and is planning to get point of inter-connect soon.
Bharti is Rs 1028 crore group having operations in the areas of cellular, basic services, national long distance, submarine cable, ISP, broadband, VSAT and customer premise equipment manufacturing.