Inspirational Stories: Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and managing director of Bharti Group, which controls India’s largest GSM-based mobile phone service, Airtel, valued at $9.5 million, is one of the key figures behind the cellular revolution in that country. Mittal, the sixth-richest person in India, is currently in charge of the USD 5 billion Bharti Group. His staggering net worth of approximately USD 11 billion places him among Asia’s self-made billionaires according to Forbes magazine. Mittal, who was born on June 15th, 1950, in Ludhiana, Punjab, earned a Bachelor of Arts and Science degree from the Punjab University. Much later in life, he reclaimed the Mittal family name. Sunil did not want to take the easy route and chose to do something different despite the fact that his father, Sam Paul Mittal, was a member of parliament. In his teenage years, Mittal had a natural propensity for business. He and a friend formed a modest bicycle company with 20,000 rupees in borrowed money after graduating. Mittal left Ludhiana for Mumbai in 1979 because he believed the company would continue to be tiny.
Sunil Mittal’s Journey from Generators to Push-Button Phones
By 1982, he had established a full-fledged firm selling Japanese-imported portable generators, which gave him a solid foundation from which to engage in marketing and promotion. When two Indian businesses received licences to manufacture generators locally, the government decided to outlaw the import of generators. When the government started giving licences for mobile phone services in 1992, Mittal finally received his big break. He signed a contract with the French telecom giant Vivendi for the Delhi cellular circle. During his visit to Taiwan, Mittal became intrigued by electronic push-button phones, and in 1982 he brought them to India in order to replace the clunky, outdated rotary phones. Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL) was established in 1986 and forged a technical partnership with Siemens AG of Germany for the production of electronic push-button phones. Mittal began producing fax machines, cordless phones, and other telecom equipment in the early 1990s.
Airtel’s Journey of Innovation and Growth under Sunil Mittal
Bharti Cellular Limited (BCL) was founded in 1995, the same year that the “Airtel” brand was introduced. As they say, the rest is history. Mittal takes satisfaction in a long list of firsts, including “the first push-button, the first cordless, the first answering machines, the first fax machines,” with the introduction of Airtel mobile phones in Delhi. Bharti was the first telecom provider to surpass the 2-million mobile subscriber threshold in a short period of time. By launching IndiaOne, the nation’s first private domestic and international long-distance service, the company also plays a key role in lowering the high STD/ISD, cellular prices in the nation. In order to build the nation’s first-ever underwater cable link between Singapore and Chennai, India, the business formed a joint venture with Singapore Telecom International in 2001. With its unrivalled star power, which includes people like Sharukh Khan, R. Madhavan, A.R. Rehman, Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Vidya Balan, and Sharman Joshi, “Airtel” has outperformed its rivals as a dependable phone connection.The dissolution of the state-run enterprises’ century-old monopoly on the provision of telecom services in India is credited to Mittal. Currently, he is in charge of a prosperous empire that focuses on various business sectors through autonomous Joint Venture businesses, with a market capitalization of about USD 2 billion, employing over 5,000 people, and continually expanding. Over a million shops and recharge locations are operated by Airtel. Airtel is one of the most effective money machines with annualised revenues of Rs 38,000 crore for 2008–09 and profit before tax of Rs 15,000 crore; by 2013, Bharti would be a trillion-rupee group.
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