Bharti Tele Targets 40% Market Share

Bharti Televentures, which is launching cellular services in eight new circles, plans to achieve a 40 per cent market share in the next few years from the present 21 per cent.

The company will kick off services in all new circles by March next year. The company is also close to tying up a debt portion of Rs 1,500 crore from banks and financial institutions to roll out services. In the long run, its total debt exposure will be around Rs 1,800 crore as Bharti believes in utilising its equity for roll out plans.

The total fresh investment envisaged by the group is around Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 crore in the telecom business. Bharti Televentures, which is gearing up for a Rs 1,000 crore initial public issue, will initially utilise equity funds raised from its strategic partners including Warburg Pincus, SingTel, New York Life, AIF Funds Management, etc.

Bharti Televentures chairman and group managing director Sunil B Mittal said the company will also kick off services in new four basic circles, but will not offer limited mobility services.

"We do not want to offer limited mobility services using the CDMA technology," Mittal said here on Thursday.

Bharti's wireless businesses are clubbed together and integrated under a business group called -- The Mobility Leaders. The business operations would span Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Chennai, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Kolkata, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh (West).

"We will have a dominant position in the next one year of operations in all the new circles. Our aim is to become the dominant player in India's GSM market, while we will continue to focus on fixed line services and further expansion will be done when the government offers next round of licences," Bharti's CFO Akhil Gupta said.

Though the Bharti-SingTel consortium has exited from bidding for the government stake in Videsh Sanchar Nigam, it is finalising the blueprint for entering the ILD business in a big way. Bharti Telesonic will be the ILD arm of the group. "We are yet to clear our investment plans which could depend on the government's ILD policy," Mittal said.

Following the acquisition of cellular licence for Mumbai and Maharashtra circles from the government, it is looking at poaching existing customers of BPL and Hutchison, the other operators. For this, it will have a detailed marketing strategy aimed at lowering cellular tariff, quality value-added services, roaming services at special rates, etc.