The tariff war, which has thrown
the world's fastest growing mobile phone market into turmoil, has also taken a toll on
its largest company, Bharti Airtel Ltd., which is
looking to expand its global footprint beyond South Asia. To maintain
its growth momentum at a time when the domestic market is saturating,
the leading Indian telecom giant has set up a new unit to take forward its
global expansion activities. As of now, with 110 million subscribers, Airtel
holds a healthy market share of around 20% of the total 520 million market and
enjoys the status of being the top service provider in India. It has been
ranked among the world's top six best performing technology companies
by BusinessWeek.
To improve its earnings, Bharti Airtel has planned to expand its
services in other South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) countries. Bharti Airtel's African
adventure to buy Zain's operations with an enterprise value of $10.7 bn in
early 2010 showed its interest in exploring and expanding distant horizons.
The company in its latest endeavor is looking out for options beyond Asia and
is in plans to expand its services in other SAARC nations. As a result, in
January 2010, Bharti announced the acquisition of 70% stake in
the Bangladesh-based Warid Telecom International for $300
mn, and in the previous year it had started its
mobile services in Sri Lanka on the state-of-the-art 3.5G network
technologies. "We have always expressed our
interest to expand in the SAARC region. We have been interested in
Bangladesh and other SAARC countries," said Akhil Gupta, the
Deputy CEO of the Bharti Enterprises.
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