Friday, March 31, 2006

Sunil Mittal

For a long time, I was contemplating about writing something on this person.

The first instance was when I saw his interview on NDTV. Sunil Mittal, the Airtel guy.

Sunil Mittal is from a small place from Haryana. After graduating from university he wanted to start his own business, so he moved in to Mumbai, against the advise of his elders.

His first business was a complete failure. Later he moved in the telephone sector. He introduced the 'beetel' telephones, at a time when all you found were the stereotype rotating dial phones. That was before 1991, when he was not allowed to import them. So he had to instead assemble parts imported from Japan.

Later around 1993, mobile was a new thing. He entered the mobile sevice area, and was ridiculed by most since this was a business that required deep pockets. This period from 1993 onwards was filled with all sorts of litigations regarding awarding lisences. He baged the lisence for Chennai, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi around 1999. After a couple of years he introduced the AIRTEL brand. It has been smooth sailing since then.

Bharti enterprise was in the recent fortune 500 list of companies. He truly represents the New Age Indian entrepreneur.

Remeber the first Frienship Cup between India and Pakistan at Toronto, that time there used to be this constant musical jig commercial between overs, which went, "to see your beautifull smile....." that was Bharti Telecom back then.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

interesting about sunil mittal....wasnt aware of him. anywhere i can read more? lemme know.

Anirudh said...

it is people like sunil mittal who will take 'brand india' to the next level in the future....creating a giant like airtel is no mean feat!

Perestroika said...

@rugved, u can read abt him right here on my blog, i will put up an additional post on him. i dont have any book on him, just know abt him thru newspapers and tv programs. but u can always google info on him.

@anirudh, yeah dude i agree wid u.

Amit said...

good post..my father also knew him from his early days in this business when he ran his comapany from nehru palace in delhi..really the telecomm revolution has a big hand in india's success..and in turn sunil mittal..

Perestroika said...

wow man ur father knew him! tht is really fascinating!!!

Amit said...

don't read much into it..my father just remembers him because he went soo far..but seriously u made me think seriously over this topic of telecom revolution..and wil soon try and blog on it