Bharti Airtel: Scaling Telecom Barriers to Sustain its Unique Business Model

Bharti Airtel is the largest telecom company in India and the first largest in the world. It provides mobiles services in 19 countries in Africa and South Asia on top of broadband internet and telephone landline services brought to 100 cities in India. Bharti Airtel also operates a satellite TV service.

2002 was the year of breakthrough for Bharti when the company executives decided to outsource the service’s technical network backbone with Nokia and Siemens. Its IT services were also outsourced with IBM. The call center service was also outsourced with local suppliers. Local shops were granted distribution rights. The company’s towers were treated as separate entities so that the cost and the use are shared. The move made Bharti as the most “asset light” telecom company in the world.

After this decisive move, Bharti’s growth was so rapid. Bharti was able to focus more on what they do best – regulatory affairs, finance, brand management and customer relations.

Using other companies’ infrastructure, assets and resources, Bharti was able to scale quickly. With the right products and mix, Bharti could take advantage of its position to grow quickly. The company top brass have seen this potential so that by partnering and working close with others, Bharti was able to successfully develop the IFFCO Green Card.

IFFCO Green Card is a device-agnostic application platform that is capable of working with all kinds of phones. The app can create a localized content that can be delivered to more than 50 million farmers across India in a language that they prefer. The card is India’s first mobile wallet that provides option for transfer or payment 24/7.

Another Bharti decisive move that’s worth noting is the 2010 purchase of Zain Africa for $10.7 billion. The acquisition allowed Bharti to continue Zain’s operations in 15 countries. The acquisition is another low-cost business model that brings telephone lines to middle class and lower middle class consumers all over the world.

Bharti’s fast and effective growth happened in less than two decades. With the way Bharti builds its internal capabilities and the way its executives are running the company, many people see that the company has the capacity to continue with its growing profitability over the next few years.