Sunil Bharti Mittal

Sunil Bharti Mittal was born on 23 October 1957 in Punjabi Aggarwal Family. Initially he joined the Wyanberg Allen School in Mussoorie but later he attended Scindhia School at Gwalior. In 1976, Sunil graduated with a Bachelors of Arts and Science, from the Punjab University, Chandigarh.

Mittal started his first business in 1976, which was to make crankshafts for local bicycle manufacturers with a capital investment of ` 20000, borrowed from his father, when he was only 18 years of age.

By 1979, Mittal moved to Mumbai, since he thought Ludhiana was not the place for the fulfillment of his ambitions.

Later, in the early 1980s he bought licenses of importing from the exporting companies in Punjab and imported thousand of portable electric-power generators from Japan.

But suddenly the Indian Government banned the import of generators and all but two licenses were canceled.

In 1984, Mittal came up with an idea and started assembling push button phones in India, which were earlier imported by a Taiwan Company, Kingtel, and replaced the old, bulky rotator phones in the country.

It was then, that Bharti Telecommunication Limited was incorporated and tied up in a technical bond with the Siemens AG of Germany for the manufacture of these push button phones. Towards the beginning of the 1990s, Mittal had started making fax machines, cordless phones and other such telecommunication gears. His first series of push button phones was named 'Mitbro'.

BHARTI TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Through its global telecom operations Bharti group operates under the ‘Airtel’ brand in 20 countries across Asia and Africa– India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Seychelles, Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. In addition, the group also has mobile operations in Jersey and Guernsey.

Over the past few years, Bharti has diversified into emerging business areas in the fast expanding Indian economy. The group has forayed into the retail sector by opening retail stores – small and medium formats. The group offers – life insurance and general insurance to customers across India. Bharti also serves customers through its fresh and processed foods business. The group has growing interests in other areas such as mobile internet, real estate, training and capacity building, and distribution of telecom / IT products.