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Bharti Tele-Ventures joined the billion-dollar-company club in the last financial year. It registered a growth of 64 percent in revenues last year to cross the Rs 5,000-crore mark.

Expansion plans continued unabated in the financial year 2003–04. The company scored not only in terms of a booming customer base, but also acquired new telecom circles and rolled-out plans to outsource its network and IT management parts to third parties. However, there were many loose knots—such as low SMS revenues, competition from Hutch, and more value-added services on mobile network—for Bharti to tie-up.

After the setback in acquiring Escotel early this year, Bharti bounced back to acquire a 67.5 percent stake in Hexacom India. The aggregate amount of the deal was Rs 430 crore and gave it the rights for cellular services in the Rajasthan and Northeast circles.

The mobility business accounted for almost 65 percent of the company´s consolidated revenues and stood at Rs 3,261 crore. Till March 2004, the mobile subscriber base of Bharti grew by 111 percent, aggregating 6,504,314 year-on-year. With this, Bharti has almost a 19 percent share of the mobile market.

For the first time, the quarterly net additions of mobile customers crossed the one-million mark in the fourth quarter of FY 2003–04. The prepaid connections were almost 79 percent of the total subscribers and the rest were postpaid ones. SMS still accounted for only 3.6 percent of the total revenues.

The fixed-line business (under the Touchtel brandname) also jumped 71 percent to reach 636,625. The fixed-line segment shared 15 percent of the company´s total revenues, while 20 percent of the company´s revenues came from the long distance and data services.

After the implementation of Unified Access Regime, Bharti Tele-Ventures migrated its 15 cellular licenses to the UASL. This year the company also took licenses for five new circles. It has also applied for a UASL for Assam. As part of its expansion strategy, Bharti plans to network 20,000 new villages and 1,000 new towns across the 21 circles in FY 2004–05. After the arrival of the unified access regime, Bharti Infotel surrendered its basic services licences for Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu and demanded a refund of Rs 145 crore from the DoT.

Bharti made a strategic leap by signing a $400-million contract with Ericsson to manage, maintain, and provide quality assurance in 10 existing and three new AirTel networks. A similar deal was concluded with Nokia for the Mumbai, Maharashtra (including Goa), and Gujarat circles as well as the two new circles—Bihar (including Jharkhand) and Orissa. This deal is valued at $275 million.

In another deal, IBM will provision IT services, hardware, and software for Bharti´s telecom requirements. The deal is valued at $275 million for the first five years. For a 10-year period, the total deal is likely to be in the range to $700 to 750 million. But this, coupled with the launch of Easy Charge, cost the company almost Rs 41 crore in the last two quarters of the financial year.

The opex of the company jumped 25 percent to Rs 1,630 crore as against Rs 1,300 crore last year. The capex stood at Rs 2,200 crore for FY 2003–04.

Bharti has 23,000 Rkm of optic fiber cable network complemented by the 3,200 km undersea cable network i2i—a 50:50 joint venture between Bharti and SingTel. The company is now investing in the SEA–ME–WE–4. Earlier this year, VSNL entered a Rs 500-crore pact (for 15 years) for the rights to use Bharti´s NLD backbone.

All these plans are an indication that Bharti is steadily transforming into a leaner and meaner entity to take on the competition.