Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal | Photo: Bloomberg
When Sunil Bharti Mittal set up a small manufacturing unit making bicycle parts in Ludhiana in 1976, he was barely 18. Fifty years later, the founder of Bharti Enterprises is presiding over a business empire whose flagship, Bharti Airtel, has become one of the world's largest telecommunications companies.
The journey from bicycle crankshafts to mobile networks, submarine cables and satellite communications has been marked by bets that often ran ahead of the market, setbacks triggered by policy changes and three major crises that Mittal describes as Bharti's "Mahabharatas".
Now, as the group marks its 50th anniversary, Mittal is preparing for another transformation. He wants Airtel to evolve from a telecommunications operator into a digitally enabled technology company, with connectivity at its core and businesses spanning artificial intelligence, sovereign cloud, digital finance and satellite services.
His prescription for India's digital economy is equally expansive: higher mobile tariffs, financially stronger telecom operators, a substantial expansion of network infrastructure and greater national control over strategic communications systems.