"We will do about $10 million this year"

In and exclusive to VOICE&DATA Sanjiv Mittal shares his company’s focus

and future plans:

What is the philosophy behind a telecom operator getting into software

development area?



Very early Sunil Bharti Mittal had realized that it will be IT and not

telecom equipment, which will become the key differntiator in telecom services.

So it was a long vision plan to build an IT arm for Bharti, which would

initially focus on serving various needs of the Bharti Group–whether it was

basic services or ISP or cellular. Later on, we started developing those

solutions into products, and addressing the global markets too. We hope to do

business worth $10 million this fiscal

What are the focus areas of Bharti Telesoft ?



The company is basically structured to build products and solutions in:

i) Switching and Network Management



ii) Customer Care & Billing, and


iii) Web and Wireless Applications.

In the first category, we make solutions such as missed call alerts, SMS

welcome messages, optimal call routing, network performance monitoring, capacity

planning. In Customer Care & Billing we have solutions such as revenues

assurance, and Fraud Management. Under the Web and wireless applications we

develop enterprise applications such as Fleet Management System, Mobile Banking

Solutions, Mobile Lottery, Airline Alert solutions.

Is India your main market ?



Currently, about 50 percent business is coming from India where Bharti is

our big customer. Other major customers are Hutch, Idea, BSNL, and ICICI. In the

next two years time we would want about 70 percent of our revenues to come from

exports. We are focussing on emerging markets such as Sri Lanka, South Africa,

Middle East, Eastern Europe, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia. We are looking at

those operators which are about 4-5 years old and evolving.

How do you position Bharti Telesoft in the Indian market?



For India, billing is not our strategy. We focus on developing cost

effective value added solutions, and enterprise solutions. Also call center

utilities and solutions.

Ibrahim Ahmad