Ludhiana Bicycle Parts Maker Sunil Mittal Marks 50 Years

He also learned the limits of a relatively small industrial market. He went on to make crankshafts for bicycle makers and to trade products such as hosiery yarn. Neither offered spectacular growth, but they gave him a grounding in margins and distribution.

In 1979 he left Ludhiana for Mumbai. His next bet was importing portable electric generators from Japan, aimed at India's shortage of reliable power. The government then restricted generator imports, and that business was disrupted.

From telephones to Airtel

On his travels, Mittal had come across push-button telephones, far more convenient than the rotary-dial instruments common in India. He struck a technical collaboration with Siemens and began making them under the name Bharti Telecom.

The shift mattered. Telephone connections were hard to get in India, and the government's monopoly over telecommunications had left large unmet demand. Mittal concluded the bigger opportunity would arrive once the sector opened to private investment, and he wanted to run a network rather than sell equipment.

That opening came with the telecom reforms of the 1990s. Mittal secured a cellular licence in Delhi and launched Airtel in 1995. The business needed heavy capital, regulatory clearances and the ability to build a network while mobile phones were still expensive.

Satellites next

Bharti Airtel stayed India's largest mobile operator by subscriber base for nearly a decade, from 2009 until the Vodafone-Idea merger in 2018. By the time Reliance Jio arrived in 2016, Mittal had built Airtel into India's dominant private telecom operator.

Now, as the industry prepares for another technological shift, his focus is the satellite communication business. In an exclusive interview with The Economic Times, Mittal said Bharti Group is open to raising its stake in OneWeb to 30%. He ruled out taking majority control.