Background

Bharti Airtel Ltd (Bharti Airtel), formerly known as Bharti Tele-Ventures, is a public limited company and a flagship company of Bharti Enterprises. The Company, established in 1995 and headquartered in New Delhi, India, subsequently launched its brand Airtel. During 1995-96, British Telecom Plc acquired a stake in the company. In 1997-98, the company forayed into VSAT Solutions and operates Telecommunications on space. Bharti Airtel now is Asia’s leading integrated telecom service providers with operations spanning across India and Sri-Lanka.

Bharti Airtel operates through four main business segments, namely, Mobile Services, Tele-media Services, Enterprise Services and Digital TV Services. Bharti Airtel’s product and services portfolio includes mobile services, home phones, broadband, calling

cards, DTH, IPTV, MPLS Services, satellite services, data transport solutions and conferencing services. Themobile services segment offers mobile & fixed wireless services using GSM technology across 22 telecom circles.The Tele-media Servicesoffers broadband and telephone services in 15 circles across 95 cities. The Enterprise Services business provides long distance wholesale voice and data services to carrier customers and VCC services in the overseas markets. As of Sep 30, 2009, the company had an aggregate of 113.44 mn customers, including 110.51 mn mobile customers registering a y-o-y growth of 42% in its customer base. The company’s revenues touched Rs 98.46 bn registering a 9% rise (y-o-y) for the second quarter ended Sept 09. The company acquired 70% stake in Warid Telecom, Bangladesh, currently a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dhabi Group. During the same year, the company entered into a managing services deal with Comviva, to manage its value added services portfolios. The company also launched world’s first Virtual Windows based Online Desktop – powered by Microsoft and Nivio for easy and affordable access to computing and broadband in India. In Oct 08, Bharti Airtel signed agreements with IBM to provide IT support for its operations in Sri Lanka; which is an extension of software major’s contract in India. During FY08, the company transferred its telecom infrastructure operations to Bharti Infratel Ltd.