AGENTS OF CHANGE: SUNIL BHARTI MITTAL

He has the knack to strike at the right place at the right time. His contribution in shaping the modern telecom industry in India earned him the sixth place in the Forbes list of ‘India’s 40 Richest’.

Although he belonged to an influential political family, he chose to become a first generation entrepreneur. He started his first venture in 1976 with a capital investment of Rs.20,000 ($487) for a small bicycle firm at Ludhiana city in the north Indian state of Punjab, but soon realised that the potential to scale up this business was limited.

He shifted his focus to import and distribution operations in Mumbai, India’s financial capital and New Delhi, country’s national capital and started importing portable generators from Japan. The flourishing venture, however, faced a sudden road-block when the government banned the import of generators as it awarded licenses to two Indian companies for manufacturing generators in India.

However, during a trip to Taiwan he came across electronic push button phones. He sensed an opportunity, as only bulky rotary phones were available to Indian users that time. In 1982, he introduced the push button phones to India. This was the first experience of Indian consumers with modern age telecom. He formed Bharti Teletech Ltd and started manufacturing push button phones in technical tie-up with Siemens AG of Germany. His company is now one of the largest manufacturers of telephones in the world.

The real opportunity for Sunil came in 1992, when the Indian government awarded licences for GSM mobile phone services first ever in the country. Armed with considerable experience in telecom manufacturing, he secured the licence for offering mobile phone services in Delhi. His company Bharti Cellular Ltd started mobile phone operations in 1995 under the brand name AirTel. 

The initial years of the cellular business were not as rosy as they are today. The role-out of telecom services required a lot of initial investments and the returns were not adequate due to the low subscriber base. With the help of private equity investors and foreign partner Singapore Telecommunications Limited, Singapore's largest telecommunications company, he successfully met the challenges of capital intensive role-out, cut throat competition and policy changes. 


Sunil has expanded the single circle mobile phone service in to a pan-India integrated telecom company with market capitalisation of about Rs.1,500 billion ($36 billion), the third highest in India after Reliance Industries Ltd, largest private sector diversified conglomerate and Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd, state owned largest oil refiner.

After establishing Bharti AirTel as the largest telecom service provider among the private telecom operators in India, Sunil Mittal has turned his attention to new opportunities such as Retail, Agri-exports and Life Insurance. Also, he has just been elected as the President of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), a non-government, not-for-profit, industry-led and industry-managed organisation.