At $15 billion m-cap in 10 years, the going could not have been better for Bharti Tele-Ventures. Founder Sunil Mittal is among those Indian entrepreneurs who rode the early waves of liberalisation to build what has become one of India’s fastest growing telecom operations. Today the company is uniquely positioned — it has a Singapore-based investor (SingTel) and another global UK-based giant (Vodafone), both in the same firm. Managing partners and relationships has never been difficult for Mittal. He is using the same dexterity to fashion a new course for Bharti. Excerpts of an interview with Siddharth Zarabi at the ongoing HT Leadership Summit.

What does it mean to manage Bharti these days? You have grown so much and so fast…

The key difference here is that while there are three shareholders (Vodafone, SingTel and Bharti), the company is run and managed solely by Bharti. SingTel owns 30 per cent and is a major presence in South East Asia.

Today Bharti has matured — we are now bigger than SingTel in some measures, we have more consumers than them.

But, more importantly, we have to become sustainable. Vodafone is in the best position to do that. When we first met them two years ago, we realised that it was like us, only much bigger. Since Vodafone and SingTel do not compete on the footprint, except in Australia, we are blessed with the best of both worlds.

Can you divest yet more equity in Bharti Tele-Ventures?

No, we will not divest any more economic interest in the company. We have already raised a large amount of money and don’t need more.

So where do you and Bharti go from here? Another business perhaps?

I have done telecom for 29 years of my life and the business is capably being run now. I am not planing to be a serial entrepreneur, but want to grow business. I have always been hands-on, at first I climbed towers and am not averse to tilling fields now.

You are pointing towards the fledgling agricultural business among the new projects?

I am keen that our field fresh business grows really big in the next two years. It is a slow and painful business, but we will have a jumpstart.

That apart, the telecom business is a big passion and we now have hopes of going abroad. We are looking at the right market opportunity. There is nothing concrete on the horizon as yet, but we are looking at various markets — SouthEast, the Middle East and elsewhere. But you have to remember that telecom equity is expensive abroad, going by the recent $32 billion O2 acquisition overseas.

So, what’s the warchest like?

Well, it is a billion dollars (around Rs 4,500 crore) today. That’s the personal bit (Bharti Televentures Limited has an m-cap of $15 billion and can possibly use stock in any prospective transaction).

On a broader level, what’s your view on the telecom industry?

The new telecom policy will be out soon. Going forward, it should resolve all small issues. Apart from that, matters like spectrum and convergence also need to be resolved fast.