"We will do about $10 million this year"

In and exclusive to VOICE&DATA Sanjiv Mittal shares his company’s focus and future plans:

What is the philosophy behind a telecom operator getting into software development area?
Very early Sunil Bharti Mittal had realized that it will be IT and not telecom equipment, which will become the key differntiator in telecom services. So it was a long vision plan to build an IT arm for Bharti, which would initially focus on serving various needs of the Bharti Group—whether it was basic services or ISP or cellular. Later on, we started developing those solutions into products, and addressing the global markets too. We hope to do business worth $10 million this fiscal

Sanjiv Mittal,

CEO, Bharti Telesoft

What are the focus areas of Bharti Telesoft ?
The company is basically structured to build products and solutions in:

i) Switching and Network Management
ii) Customer Care & Billing, and
iii) Web and Wireless Applications.

In the first category, we make solutions such as missed call alerts, SMS welcome messages, optimal call routing, network performance monitoring, capacity planning. In Customer Care & Billing we have solutions such as revenues assurance, and Fraud Management. Under the Web and wireless applications we develop enterprise applications such as Fleet Management System, Mobile Banking Solutions, Mobile Lottery, Airline Alert solutions.

Is India your main market ?
Currently, about 50 percent business is coming from India where Bharti is our big customer. Other major customers are Hutch, Idea, BSNL, and ICICI. In the next two years time we would want about 70 percent of our revenues to come from exports. We are focussing on emerging markets such as Sri Lanka, South Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia. We are looking at those operators which are about 4-5 years old and evolving.

How do you position Bharti Telesoft in the Indian market?
For India, billing is not our strategy. We focus on developing cost effective value added solutions, and enterprise solutions. Also call center utilities and solutions.

Ibrahim Ahmad