BHARTI TELE-VENTURES	4
CMD: Sunil Bharti Mittal Address: H 5/12 Qutab Ambience, Mehrauli Road,New Delhi – 110 030 Tel : 011- 51666000 Fax:011-51666011 Website: www.bhartiteleventures.com  V&D estimates CyberMedia Research

For Bharti Tele-Ventures, 2002–03 was the year of the reckoning. This was its first full fiscal as a listed company. Naturally, both industry analysts as well as stakeholders watched its performance closely and keenly. And Bharti didn’t disappoint. Its revenues shot up by 107 percent to touch a figure of Rs 3,082.9 crore in fiscal 2002–03. The fourth quarter brought investors smiles by generating a positive PAT for the first time. Subscriber-wise, its mobile operation Bharti Mobile added 1.7 million customers during the course of the year while its fixed services operation Bharti Infotel added 2.08 lakh customers. 

Also, it was a year of grand expansion. The company spent over Rs 1,933.6 crore in capex, with total gross project investments into its various operations standing at Rs 9,724.3 crore by the end of the fiscal. As a result, Bharti Mobile more than doubled its number of operational circles to 15 by March 2003. Bharti Infotel also added two more operational circles during the course of the year. 

However, Bharti Tele-Ventures’ most significant achievement of FY 2002–03 was its careful and crafty negotiation of the serious challenge presented by the WLL mobile operators. Under it, the GSM operators not only managed to retain a large portion of the mobile market, but also made the government spell out some crucial favorable terms, which would be of help in taking on future challenges.

But, herein also lies the greatest threat to Bharti Tele-Ventures. Though the WLL companies did not make much headway during the past fiscal, recent schemes like the Monsoon Hangama offer from Reliance Infocomm have managed to generate a lot of excitement. Bharti has to further intensify its marketing effort as well as its network capacity/quality to stop the pendulum from swinging to the competition’s side.