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With operations in almost every type of telecom service in addition to equipment businesses such as telephones, telecom software and an international telecom services in Seychelles, Bharti Group is one of the most diversified telecom groups in India. For a corporate that started from scratch about a decade ago, this has been a remarkable achievement.
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Bharti Group, with a total group turnover of Rs 3,326 crore, is India’s third biggest telecom group, after the group of companies backed by DoT and the Tatas. But unlike other groups, the Bharti Group companies are all totally greenfield operations, all of them children of the telecom revolution that began in the early 1990s. The Bharti Group is also about a dream come true. Were it not for one man’s (Sunil Bharti Mittal’s) vision and courage, today one would not have seen this young and dynamic group challenging the likes of BSNL, MTNL, Tatas and Reliance purely on the strength of ‘been there, done it’ in India’s new telecom scenario.
During the last fiscal, Bharti Teletech, the group’s equipment company crossed the milestone of shipping out its 20 millionth telephone, thus becoming the world’s largest telephone manufacturer outside China. Bharti Telesoft, the group’s software and solutions arm, is becoming as a force to reckon in building and providing solutions for the developing economies.
However, it is Bharti Tele-Ventures that takes the cake and also the cherry as far as the Bharti Group is concerned. This services company operates its mobile services under the brand of AirTel. Today, Bharti Tele-Ventures is India’s largest mobile operator with live networks in 17 Indian states. Another major brand is Touchtel, for fixed telephony services, available in five of the biggest circles. Then there is IndiaOne, the company’s long-distance arm that’s beginning to provide a good deal of competition to the monopoly long-distance operators, primarily VSNL in ILD and BSNL in NLD operations.
| Group Companies in Telecommunication | |
| Company | Performance/Achievement |
| Bharti Tele-Ventures | Over 100 percent growth in revenues. Achieved 3 million mobile subscribers base. No. 1 cellular service operator, No. 3 basic service operator, No. 2 NLD operator, No. 2 VSAT operator, No. 3 ILD operator |
| Bharti Teletech | No. 1 telephone handset equipment vendor |
| Bharti Telesoft | Focus on providing telecom solutions to developing markets |
| Telecom Seychelles | Leading cellular service provider in Seychelles |
But the Indian telecom story has just begun. It is only over the recent past that the major corporate groups of India and big international players became really serious about telecom and started taking the plunge. In particular, BSNL, along with MTNL, took on Bharti head on, and hit it where it hurts the most–cellular services tariff. Clearly, the group has now stepped into a very crucial and difficult period. It will have to prove to the world that when it comes to telecom it can take on anybody–be it the Ambanis or the
Tatas.
In the past, Sunil Bharti Mittal took the right decision at the right time by shifting from making bicycle parts to making telephones and subsequently building a nationwide cellular services company. Does he have it in him to take the right decisions, at a time when the telecom environment is much more competitive–and fuzzy–too than before?