Bharti Holding Co For Info Business

The Delhi-based Bharti group of companies is reorganising its holding in its electronic commerce and satellite-based very small aperture terminals (VSAT) ventures through the floatation of Bharti Telespatiale as the holding company for these businesses. Both the ventures are joint ventures with British Telecom. Bharti Telespatiale is a wholly owned subsidiary of group flagship, Bharti Telecom. The creation of the company has been necessitated to keep the domestic telecom group's joint interests with British Telecom separate from similar businesses with Telecom Italia.

The Bharti group has to date three joint ventures with British Telecom. These are the Delhi cellular licensee, Bharti Cellular, in which the UK giant holds 22.5 per cent; a 51:49 venture in Bharti-BT VSATs, a Bangalore-based company; and Bharti BT Internet Ltd, also a 51:49 venture.

On the other hand, Telecom Italia has a 30 per cent stake in Bharti Telenet, the basic telecom licensee in Madhya Pradesh and the cellular provider in Himachal Pradesh. Besides this, the Italian telecom company also has a 20 per cent stake in Bharti Televentures, which until now has been the holding company for all the Bharti telecom services businesses.

Just in July this year, the Bharti group completed a strategic withdrawal from non-core manufacturing activities as a step towards focussing on telecom services and making telephone instruments. The retraction from non-core activities involved selling its stake in a radio pager venture with Casio and another radio-design company.

As a part of the two deals, Bharti sold 39 per cent stake in the radio pager joint venture to foreign partner Casio of Japan for as estimated $1.7 million (over Rs 71.5 crore). After the sale, the shareholding in the company stands at: 90 per cent Casio and 10 per cent Mitsui. The Delhi-based telecom group also sold its investment in MSI India, a UK-based radio-design company for Rs 30-40 lakh. MSI India is a specialist in designing mobile and fixed-wireless telecom networks. The group has expressed intentions to concentrate on services _ cellular, basic telecom and VSAT _ and stick to its core and traditional business of telephone instrument manufacture.

The group's two cellular licences in Delhi and Himachal Pradesh and a basic telecom service licence in Madhya Pradesh are valued by private equity analysts at some $400-450 million (Rs 1,600-1,800 crore). Last year, Bharti replaced the Bangalore-based Wipro group when BT and it decided to split ways.

The group's telephone instruments business is owned and managed by Bharti Telecom and is marketed under the `Beetel' brand. It has a joint 49:51 joint venture with Siemens of Germany _ called Siemens Telecom Ltd _ which markets both Siemens and Beetel instruments.

Another group company, Bharti Duraline is a 50:50 joint venture between the Bharti group and Duraline, the largest telecom duct manufacturer in the US. The joint venture has a plant in Goa and has already executed orders of over 1,000 km. Ducts are used for laying telecom cables so as to protect the cables.