Bharti Airtel Limited - Company Profile

Bharti Airtel Limited  - Company Profile

Type                                      Public

Industry                               Telecommunications

Founded                             7 July 1995 (1995-07-07)

Founder(s)                         Sunil Bharti Mittal

Headquarters                    New Delhi, India

Area served                       South Asian & African countries and the Channel Islands

Key people                        Sunil Mittal, (Chairman) and (MD) , Sanjay Kapoor, (CEO)

Products                              Wireless, Telephone, Internet, Satellite television

Revenue                             US$ 7.254 billion (2009)

Operating income           US$ 2.043 billion (2009)

Net income                        US$ 1.662 billion (2009)

Total assets                        US$ 11.853 billion (2009)

Employees                         25,543 (2009)

Parent                                  Bharti Enterprises(63.56%), SingTel(32.04%), Vodafone(4.4%)

Introduction:

Sunil Bharti Mittal founded the Bharti Group. In 1983, Sunil Mittal entered into an agreement with Germany's Siemens to manufacture the company's push-button telephone models for the Indian market. In 1986, Sunil Bharti Mittal incorporated Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL) and his company became the first in India to offer push-button telephones, establishing the basis of Bharti Enterprises. This first-mover advantage allowed Sunil Mittal to expand his manufacturing capacity elsewhere in the telecommunications market. By the early 1990s, Sunil Mittal had also launched the country's first fax machines and its first cordless telephones. In 1992, Sunil Mittal won a bid to build a cellular phone network in Delhi. In 1995, Sunil Mittal incorporated the cellular operations as Bharti Tele-Ventures and launched service in Delhi. In 1996, cellular service was extended to Himachal Pradesh. In 1999, Bharti Enterprises acquired control of JT Holdings, and extended cellular operations to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In 2000, Bharti acquired control of Skycell Communications, in Chennai. In 2001, the company acquired control of Spice Cell in Calcutta. Bharti Enterprises went public in 2002, and the company was listed on Mumbai Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange of India. In 2003, the cellular phone operations were rebranded under the single Airtel brand. In 2004, Bharti acquired control of Hexacom and entered Rajasthan. In 2005, Bharti extended its network to Andaman and Nicobar. In 2009, Airtel launched its first international mobile network in Sri Lanka. In 2010, Airtel began operating in Bangladesh and 16 African countries. Today, Airtel is the largest cellular service provider in India and fifth largest in the world.

Worldwide Presence

Airtel is the 5th largest mobile operator in the world in terms of subscriber base and has a commercial presence in 19 countries and the Channel Islands.
Its area of operations include:

• 3 countries in the Indian Subcontinent: Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka

• 16 countries in Africa: Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

• Channel Islands: Jersey and Guernsey

Airtel owns 70 % of Warid Telecom in Bangladesh through a joint venture. Bharti Airtel Limited will take management control of the company and its board, and will relaunch the company's services under its own Airtel brand. The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission approved the deal on January 4, 2010. Airtel operates on the British Crown Dependency islands of Jersey and Guernsey, under the brand name Airtel-Vodafone, through an agreement with Vodafone.

Airtel operates in the following countries. Airtel is interimly known as Zain in the African operations it acquired in June 2010. Those acquisitions will rebrand as Airtel on November 23, 2010.

Subscriber Base

Bharti had 195 million subscribers across 19 countries as of September 30, 2010.

Subscriber base in India

The Airtel subscriber base according to Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) as of August 2010 was:

Metros

• Chennai - 2,877,029
• Delhi - 6,950,079
• Mumbai - 3,201,916
• Kolkata - 2,947,042

"A" Circle

• Andhra Pradesh - 14,240,429
• Gujarat - 5,980,024
• Karnataka - 13,434,418
• Maharashtra - 7,209,072
• Tamil Nadu - 8,744,937

"B" Circle

• Haryana - 1,580,398
• Kerala - 3,332,095
• Madhya Pradesh - 7,496,236
• Punjab - 5,171,278
• Rajasthan - 11,004,105
• Uttar Pradesh (East) - 8,534,334
• Uttar Pradesh (West) - 4,923,409
• West Bengal - 6,644,688

"C" Circle

• Assam - 2,683,243
• Bihar - 12,600,521
• Himachal Pradesh - 1,452,709
• Jammu and Kashmir - 1,751,239
• North Eastern States - 1,612,005
• Orissa - 4,840,243

Airtel is the market leader in India with about 31.18% market share of 481 million GSM mobile connections as of August 2010.

Airtel is one of world’s leading providers of telecommunication services with presence in all the 22 licensed jurisdictions (also known as Telecom Circles) in India, and operations in Srilanka, Bangladesh and in Africa. Airtel served an aggregate of 194.8 million customers as of September 30, 2010; of whom 187.7 million subscribe to our GSM services and 3.2 million use our Telemedia Services either for voice and/or broadband access delivered through DSL. We are the largest wireless service provider in India, based on the number of customers as of September 30, 2010. Airtel offers an integrated suite of telecom solutions to our enterprise customers, in addition to providing long distance connectivity both nationally and internationally. We also offer DTH and IPTV Services. All these services are rendered under a unified brand “Airtel”.

The company also deploys, owns and manages passive infrastructure pertaining to telecom operations under its subsidiary Bharti Infratel Limited. Bharti Infratel owns 42% of Indus Towers Limited. Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers are the two top providers of passive infrastructure services in India.

Partners

Network Equipment

Mobile Services

Nokia Siemens, Ericsson, Huawei

Telemedia & Long Distance Services

Nokia Siemens, Juniper, Cisco, Alcatel Lucent, ECI, Tellabs

Information Technology

IBM

Call Centre Operations

IBM Daksh, Hinduja TMT, Teleperformance,
Mphasis, Firstsource & Aegis

Equity Partner {Strategic}

Singtel

Bharti Airtel, usually referred to simply as "airtel", is an Indian telecommunications company that operates in 19 countries across South Asia, Africa and the Channel Islands. It operates a GSM network in all countries, providing 2G or 3G services depending upon the country of operation. Airtel is the fifth largest telecom operator in the world with over 190 million subscribers as of September 30, 2010. It is the largest cellular service provider in India, with over 143 million subscribers as of September 30, 2010. Airtel is the 3rd largest in-country mobile operator by subscriber base, behind China Mobile and China Unicom. It has a 29.00% market share of the GSM mobile service in India.

Airtel also offers fixed line services and broadband services. It offers its telecom services under the Airtel brand and is headed by Sunil Bharti Mittal. Bharti Airtel is the first Indian telecom service provider to achieve this Cisco Gold Certification. To earn Gold Certification, Bharti Airtel had to meet rigorous standards for networking competency, service, support and customer satisfaction set forth by Cisco. The company also provides land-line telephone services and broadband Internet access (DSL) in over 96 cities in India. It also acts as a carrier for national and international long distance communication services. The company has a submarine cable landing station at Chennai, which connects the submarine cable connecting Chennai and Singapore.

It is known for being the first mobile phone company in the world to outsource everything except marketing and sales and finance. Its network (base stations, microwave links, etc.) is maintained by Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Network and Huawei., business support by IBM and transmission towers by another company (Bharti Infratel Ltd. in India). Ericsson agreed for the first time, to be paid by the minute for installation and maintenance of their equipment rather than being paid up front. This enabled the company to provide pan-India phone call rates of Rs. 1/minute (U$0.02/minute). Call rates have come down much further. During the last financial year [2009-10], Bharti has roped in a strategic partner Alcatel-Lucent to manage the network infrastructure for the Telemedia Business.

The company is structured into four strategic business units - Mobile, Telemedia, Enterprise and Digital TV. The Telemedia business provides broadband, IPTV and telephone services in 89 Indian cities. The Digital TV business provides Direct-to-Home TV services across India. The Enterprise business provides end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and national and international long distance services to telcos.

In January 2010, company announced that Manoj Kohli, Joint Managing Director and current Chief Executive Officer of Indian and South Asian operations, will become the Chief Executive Officer of the International Business Group from 1 April 2010. He will be overseeing Bharti's overseas business. Current Dy. CEO, Sanjay Kapoor, will replace Manoj Kohli and will be the CEO, effective from 1 April 2010.