Word: bharti
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Time passes slowly in India, but not for Sunil Mittal. Four years ago, the 45-year-old entrepreneur was a bit player in the Indian telecommunications market, the owner of cellular franchises in Delhi and the small neighboring state of Himachal Pradesh. Total customer base: 116,000. Today, his Bharti Tele-Ventures is the largest mobile phone company on the subcontinent. Customer base: 2.5 million. He recently wrapped up a $1 billion expansion that quadrupled the size of his network in less than a year. Mittal even completed an acquisition of a competitor?from initial offer to signed contract...
...While India's telecom pond is still small, Mittal, a former bicycle parts maker, has used first-mover advantage to become a big fish. Bharti has the largest market share nationally, at 28%, and his lead is widening by the day. In September, two out of three consumers joining mobile phone services chose his Airtel network, which covers an area with a potential 600 million customers?a market nearly twice the size of the U.S. He has even branched into domestic long-distance services, and this year Bharti became the first private company in India to launch an international long...
...Mittal makes it a point never to act nervous. Colleagues describe him as a highly focused, down-to-earth workaholic. "He's not the kind of guy who will crack a joke to break the stress," says a Bharti employee. On the other hand, he doesn't have the short fuse of many type-A CEOS, either. In July, Mittal gathered 80 journalists at the rooftop ballroom of Bombay's lavish Oberoi hotel for an elaborate ceremony to mark Airtel's local launch. First, Mittal tried to light a large oil lamp with a candle, but the wicks were soaked...
...money for his breakaway network expansion is one of those things. Mittal, a serial entrepreneur, is a master at attracting investments and getting loans in India, where capital has been in painfully short supply?a skill that is especially helpful when your rivals have more money than you. Bharti has garnered a total $1.2 billion of foreign equity investment, more than any other Indian company. Singapore Telecommunications has invested $650 million, and Warburg Pincus has a stake worth nearly $300 million, the private equity fund's third-largest overseas investment. Dalip Pathak, a managing director at Warburg in London, says...
...government was awarding licenses for mobile phone services for the first time, and two years later Mittal secured rights to serve New Delhi. "We were a tiny company," remembers his brother Rajan, a managing director at the firm, "but we knew we had to take a shot." Right away Bharti went head-to-head with India's industrial titans. The other Delhi operator was controlled by Essar Group, a steel-making giant. But Mittal found ways to compete. He convinced European telecom equipment-maker Ericsson to supply Bharti's network on credit; he promised to pay "when the customers...