Information Technology

Mar 8, 2007
India’s Telecom Czar on Fortune’s cover

NEW DELHI -- “Mobile Maharaja” and “Wireless Wonder” is how the prestigious magazine Fortune has described Sunil Bharti Mittal, Bharti group’s chairman and managing director in a cover story on his business strategy. The January 2007 issue features Mittal’s portrait on the cover. The magazine has chosen Sunil Mittal as the Businessman of the Year in Asia.

The US-based global magazine has focused on the innovative strategy that Sunil Mittal thought out to overcome the lack of resources in meeting the galloping demand for his Airtel brand of mobile phones. The answer was to outsource the setting up and maintenance of the networks to the manufacturers. The success of this policy has enabled Bharti, the number one mobile service provider in the country to post a profit every year since 2003, the magazine points out, “even as major rivals bleed red ink.”

Another contract signed by Bharti was that with IBM to which the company outsourced its entire IT services including billing, management of customer accounts and operation of its intranet. Now, Bharti and IBM are together exploring new business opportunities -- the two together have already bagged the income tax department’s network installation and maintenance that enables people to file tax returns from any part of the country where the network extends. Mittal deems such partnerships as “the core of my strategy,” the magazine says.

The cover story also describes Sunil Mittal’s new ventures in life insurance, farm products and the latest— with the world’s top corporation Wal-Mart for retail stores. Investment in the joint venture with Wal-Mart is expected to exceed US $1 billion. It would be a partnership between Bharti’s customer focus and the US giant’s excellence in sourcing, supply-chain and logistics management, the magazine says. Fortune calls the JV “most audacious foreign partnership yet” of Sunil Mittal. He himself thinks that the partnership “could have a transformative impact” on Indian life. The magazine describes this relentless climb up the peak as due to the “entrepreneurial passion” of the Bharti chief. And he adds that at 49, he has more peaks to climb.