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Airtel

Airtel

Tagline

Express Yourself

Net Worth

$4,400,000,000

Started in (City)

New Delhi

Started in (Country)

India

Incorporation Date

07th December, 1995

Bankruptcy Date

-

Founders

  • Sunil Bharti Mittal

About

Bharti Airtel Limited, also known as Airtel, is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company based in New Delhi, Delhi NCT, India. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands. It provides 2G, 4G LTE, 4G+ mobile services, fixed-line broadband, and voice services depending upon the country of operation. VoLTE technology was rolled across all Indian telecom circles by Airtel. It is the second-largest mobile network operator in India as well as in the World, with over 457.96 million (45.796 crores) subscribers and 355 million subscribers in India. Airtel was named India's 2nd most valuable brand in the first-ever Brandz ranking by Millward Brown and WPP plc. Airtel is credited with pioneering the business strategy of outsourcing all of its business operations except marketing, sales, and finance and building the 'minutes factory' model of low cost and high volumes.

Beginning

In 1984, Sunil Mittal started assembling push-button phones in India, which he earlier used to import from a Taiwan company, Kingtel, replacing the old-fashioned, bulky rotary phones that were in use in the country then. Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL) was incorporated and entered into a technical tie-up with Siemens AG of Germany for the manufacture of electronic push-button phones. By the early 1990s, Bharti was making fax machines, cordless phones, and other telecom gear. He named his first push-button phone 'Mitbrau'. In 1992, he successfully bid for one of the four mobile phone network licenses auctioned in India. One of the conditions for the Delhi cellular license was that the bidders have some experience as a telecom operators. So, Mittal clinched a deal with the French telecom group Vivendi. He was one of the first Indian entrepreneurs to identify the mobile telecom business as a major growth area. His plans were finally approved by the Government in 1994 and he launched services in Delhi in 1995, when Bharti Cellular Limited (BCL) was formed to offer cellular services under the brand name AirTel. Within a few years, Bharti became the first telecom company to cross the 2 million mobile subscriber mark. Bharti also brought down the STD/ISD cellular rates in India under the brand name 'Indiaone'.

Road to Success

In 1999, Bharti Enterprises acquired control of JT Holdings, and extended cellular operations to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In 2000, Bharti acquired control of Skycell Communications, in Chennai. In 2001, the company acquired control of Spice Cell in Calcutta. Bharti Enterprises went public in 2002, and the company was listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange of India. In 2003, the cellular phone operations were re-branded under the single Airtel brand. In 2004, Bharti acquired control of Hexacom and entered Rajasthan. In 2005, Bharti extended its network to Andaman and Nicobar. This expansion allowed it to offer voice services all across India. In 2009, Bharti negotiated for its strategic partner Alcatel-Lucent to manage the network infrastructure for the fixed-line business. Later, Bharti Airtel awarded the three-year contract to Alcatel-Lucent for setting up an Internet Protocol access network across the country. This would help consumers access the internet at a faster speed and high-quality internet browsing on mobile handsets. In 2009, Airtel launched its first international mobile network in Sri Lanka. In June 2010, Bharti acquired the African business of Zain Telecom for $10.7 billion making it the largest-ever acquisition by an Indian telecom firm. In 2012, Bharti tied up with Wal-Mart, the US retail giant, to start a number of retail stores across India.

Challenges

In May 2008, it emerged that Airtel was exploring the possibility of buying the MTN Group, a South Africa-based telecommunications company with operations in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East. The Financial Times reported that Bharti was considering offering US$45 billion for a 100% stake in MTN, which would be the largest overseas acquisition ever by an Indian firm. However, both sides emphasized the tentative nature of the talks. The Economist magazine noted, "If anything, Bharti would be marrying up", as MTN had more subscribers, higher revenues, and broader geographic coverage. However, the talks fell apart as MTN Group tried to reverse the negotiations by making Bharti almost a subsidiary of the new company. In May 2009, Airtel confirmed that it was again in talks with MTN and both companies agreed to discuss the potential transaction exclusively by 31 July 2009. Airtel said, "Bharti Airtel Ltd is pleased to announce that it has renewed its effort for a significant partnership with MTN Group". The exclusivity period was extended twice up to 30 September 2009. Talks eventually ended without agreement. A solution was proposed where the new company would be listed on two stock exchanges, one in South Africa and one in India. However, dual-listing of companies is not permitted by Indian law.

Failures

On 8 December 2019, a serious security fault was detected that existed in Airtel's API. The bug allowed potential threat actors to "fetch sensitive user information of any Airtel subscriber." Ehraz Ahmed was the first to observe this technical glitch, and he released a video demonstrating a script being used to obtain information from Airtel's mobile app's API. On his blog, Ehraz concluded that such flaw can result in "revealed information like first and last name, gender, email, date of birth, address, subscription information, device capability information for 4G, 3G & GPRS, network information, activation date, user type (prepaid or postpaid) and current IMEI number" all being very sensitive user information. Airtel acknowledged the issue and it was fixed shortly after, it is yet to confirm whether there was an actual data breach or not.

Achievements

  • Second Largest Mobile Network Operator in India
  • Second Largest Mobile Network Operator in world

Subsidies

  • Airtel India
  • Airtel Payments Bank
  • Airtel Digital TV
  • Airtel Srilanka
  • Robi Axiata Limited
  • Airtel Africa
  • Airtel-Vodafone
  • Wynk

CEOs

  • Gopal Vittal