Welcome to 4Ps Business and Marketing

“I am a new age entrepreneur. I believe I represent the changing face of India,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal (SBM to his friends and colleagues), while addressing faculty and students at the convocation function of a management school in Bangalore. His self-assessment could not have been more accurate! The manner in which he has been able to usurp a ‘pole-position’ in India Inc. (from right under the noses of the Tatas, Birlas and Ambanis of the world) stands testimony to his revolutionary streak. For those who came in late, the Ludhiana boy started with a bicycle parts business and today straddles a multi-billion dollar telecom empire.

It all began when he applied for and won a telecom licence and launched mobile services in Delhi and NCR in 1995. That was the beginning of SBM’s battle with the ‘big boys’ to stake his claim to a coveted ‘pole position’ in Indian business – a battle, which he has won, fair and square. With a market cap of Rs.1.52 trillion (as on June 2, 2009), Bharti Telecom now stands tall among India Inc.’s top rankers, amidst the Ambani and Tata empires – the very names that once perhaps sparked his envy! If the MTN deal comes through (see box on pg.71) , Bharti’s stature will grow bigger and better.

The telecom dream is on track. But not resting on past laurels, Mittal already seems to be looking for the next big leap. In fact, he had started fantasising about new frontiers years ago. And last year when he gave up the role of Bharti Airtel’s CEO to Manoj Kohli, the desire in part was to focus more on emerging businesses. Along with brothers Rakesh and Rajan Bharti Mittal, the winsome threesome have laid out the roadmap for Bharti Enterprises. Financial services (where Bharti teams up with AXA); retail (with Walmart as their winning gambit) and processed foods (a JV with Singapore based Del Monte) are the new playing fields. Question is, which of them will deliver the goods? Do these forays have it in them to come up to the stature of brand Airtel? More important, do the Mittal brothers have it in them to repeat their telecom achievements?

Many argue that the success of Airtel is largely because of Bharti’s first mover advantage. In contrast, in all their other (relatively new) businesses, they probably have somewhat of a last mover disadvantage. But a word about SBM, the ‘new age entrepreneur’ is perhaps in order here. Simply surviving (minus the deep pockets of the other biggies in the business mind you), let alone profiteering, in the cat-eat-cat world of capital-intensive big business takes vision, guts and above all, a killer instinct. Sunil had the vision to apply for a telecom licence at the right time and long before the biggies jumped in, he was selling mobile connections – when the price of a handset was Rs.40,000 and calls used to cost a whopping Rs.32 per minute.

When the next set of telecom licences were handed out, large industrial houses jumped in with big bucks. Unfazed, Mittal continued to lay the roadmap for Airtel. He deftly manipulated bureaucratic speed-breakers, competitive sharp turns and raised enough capital to build his infrastructure to achieve the targets he had set for himself. Next, when the entire industry was busy guarding their individual infrastructures, in 2004, SBM went ahead and boldly outsourced Bharti’s cellular network operations to its equipment vendors - Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens. His logic: telecom is a people’s business and so he must focus on customer service. Competition sniggered once again, only to recognise the intelligence of the move later. Two years down, other telcos also began hiving off their tower businesses. His model worked. Airtel recently was the first Indian service provider to cross the 100 million subscribers mark, growing by about three million new additions every month.