Among the Indian telecom fraternity, he is much too young to head a company. But at 37, Sanjay Kapoor, is already the CEO of Bharti Cellular, the #1 cellular service provider and arguably the most happening Indian Telecom Group today. A keen and innovative mind, he has 13 years’ experience in marketing and business operations. Earlier, as the COO of the same company he was responsible for the launch of single number and SMS, which proved to be extremely popular with AirTel subscribers. His focus now is on WAP. In his first ever interview after assuming his new office, Kapoor talks to Pravin Prashant of Voice & Data about WAP, Bharti Cellular’s expansion plans, and the future of cellular industry in India. Excerpts.

What has been the performance of Bharti Cellular in fiscal 1999-00.
Last fiscal was an unprecedented year as there was an addition of 68,000 subscribers, the highest so far in comparison to any fiscal. The company also registered the highest ever profit and wiped out all the cumulative losses by clocking a turnover of Rs 350 crore. We had a dominant market share in revenue as well as number of subscribers.

What were the reasons for this exceptionally good performance?
Increase in number of new subscribers, popularity of pre-paid SIM cards, increase in airtime usage, and increase in roaming revenue with the increase in roaming agreements within different networks in India as well as in other countries. There has been an increase in the usage of value-added services such as SMS services as AirTel provides around 58 SMS services. Presently, around 1,00,000 messages are communicated everyday by AirTel users.

What do you have to say with regard to WAP investment and its acceptability in the market?
The investment will be on the application development front, i.e., hardware and software, WAP gateway, and system
integration. Investment will be also on content aggregation and customizing the applications so that customers can get
personalized messages for services like news, e-commerce, billing, marketing, and Internet services. The company is looking forward for tie-ups with multiple portals in different industry segments to give WAP initiative a head start. We plan to go for
tie-ups with 50 such companies.

Our WAP solution will be unique in the sense that it will provide carrier class WAP network.

How will you be enhancing your customer service activities?
We have simplified the activation process. It has been reduced to two days. The value-added services are now easily available. One can collect recharge coupons from 800 outlets spread across Delhi. There are 20 outlets of AirTel Connect where customer complaints and customer queries are being handled. We are educating our subscribers on value added services. The billing process and the bill delivery process have smoothened. The company is also planning to launch its new web site by July, which will promote e-commerce and WAP.

What about expansion plans?
The company is planning to invest around Rs 150 crore for its expansion plan till 2001. It is planning to install an Ericsson switch for enhancing the network capacity. There will be investment on the WAP front and other value added services.

What do you have to say about the future of cell phone industry in India?
The industry would be growing at 50 to 60 percent without CPP being implemented and there is a good opportunity also in the data market. The implementation of CPP would help in increasing the cellular subscribers, benefiting both the subscribers and operators.

With the third operator coming in, prices will come down. The next phase of expansion will be the order of day and the second phase of investment will begin. There will be a decrease in capital expenditure and increase in operating expenditure for the service providers.