On a Growth High

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It was a landmark year for Bhari Airtel as it crossed the magical figure of 50 mn subscribers in the country. The customer addition has taken its revenue to Rs 26,436 crore in FY 2007-08, clocking 47.8% increase. It plans now to increase the subscriber base to 90 mn in the next three years. Bharti is also planning to invest $8 bn in marketing, relay towers, and network equipment to garner 25% of the Indian telecom market.

The company has also formed an alliance with four global IT majors: Alcatel Lucent owned Mobilitec, Germany-based CoreMedia, US-based Adamind and UK's Apertio for its service delivery platform. Bharti is investing around $100 mn for this delivery platform, which will enable the company to offer various services related to content, messaging, and applications.

One of the significant projects for the company last year was the eGram Connectivity Infrastructure Project. As part of this agreement with the Government of Gujarat, Bharti will set up telecom infrastructure to connect 13,716 village panchayats and common service centers in the state of Gujarat.

BHARTI 2

Last year also saw the company launching its GPS-based navigation application on mobile handsets in collaboration with Wayfinder Systems AB of Sweden. Initially, the application was set to be available on BlackBerry 8800.

Continuing with its strategy of focusing on its core business and outsourcing the rest, Bharti signed a $35 mn three-year outsourcing deal with BPO service provider, Firstsource Solutions.

Bharti seeks to acquire companies in the South Asian region to fight competition. And, probably the biggest disappointment for the company was the MTN deal. Bharti tried to take over MTN of South Africa but talks failed. MTN is currently in talks with Bharti's ace competitor, Reliance Communications.

Enterprise and rural segments will be the focus of the company this year. Bharti has already tied up with IFFCO to increase its reach in the rural segment. Under this JV, Airtel offers free daily voice updates on mandi prices, farming techniques, weather forecasts, and fertilizer availability to farmers. In the coming two years, Airtel plans to be the country's top rural telecom brand. Bharti will be launching operations in Sri Lanka later this year and is investing $200 mn for the same. The company would be launching its DTH services sometime later this year, in India.

We want to be the most admired rural brand of the country

President and CEO

Manoj Kohli

Address: Bharti Airtel Ltd
Unitech World Cyber Park
Tower-A, 4th Floor, Sector-39,Gurgaon-122001, Haryana, India
Tel: 0124-4015599
Website: www.airtel.in

Highlights

Tie up with IFFCO to garner maximum share in the rural market
Rural and enterprise to be the focus areas
Launch of Sri Lanka operations later this year
Launched egram project
Broadband will be limited to 100 cities

How would you rate your performance in the last financial year?
It was a fabulous year for us. Not only did our revenue grow but our market share grew as well. Our margins improved by 2%. We believe that customer satisfaction also increased as the churn rate came down. As an organization we have grown bigger and our brand has become stronger. There is a far greater focus internally on promoting leaders. We have started the policy of hiring internally even at senior levels, which is paying dividends.

What are your plans for the rural segment?
We decided last year that we want to be the 'most admired rural brand'. As of now we are present in 3.5 lakh villages, and this will go up considerably this year. We are adding 2.4 mn subscribers every month and about 50% of our new customers are coming from the rural segment. We are also very enthusiatic about the fact that margins are healthy in the rural segment. We want to be the largest rural brand in the country. We are also planning to focus on the vernacular market for our new customers. Our minutes of usage have also gone up by 33 minutes to reach 507.

When is the launch of your DTH services due?
We are planning to launch DTH services in the next few months, and it is going to be a highly differentiated product. It will enhance our brand preference and we would be able to utilize our existing synergies. The launch of DTH will also go a long way in increasing the share of the wallet.

What are your plans for the current financial year? What is going to be your next growth strategy?
We are definitely enhancing our focus on the enterprise segment. As of now, we are handling about 2,000 corporates. This segment is going to be our focus for the next three-to-five years and we plan to be a large business-to-business player.

We would be focusing on value added services, especially mCommerce. Apart from this, we are also working on music, games, and Bollywood in the VAS segment. We have already tested our 3G services and are ready to launch them as and when the government allocates the spectrum.

We are consolidating our operations, consolidating our vendors, increasing our value additions and productivity of manpower in the company. We are also working on a supply chain. Huge work is going on in this area.

We are also planning to launch our Sri Lanka operations later this year, which is going to be our focus for the current year. Our Sri Lanka operations have a unique business model.

What is your strategy on the broadband front?
We follow a cherry-picking strategy on the broadband front. As of now we are present in 95 cities in the country and we don't plan to be present in more than 100. So, basically, we are targeting tier-1 and tier-2 cities, and that too mostly commercial complexes and hi-end residential complexes.