Sunil Bharti Mittal

Sunil Bharti Mittal, born October 23, 1957 hailing from Ludhiana is the chairman and managing director of the Bharti group. He is a pioneer, a dreamer and an achiever. Sunil a former student of Harvard Business School, graduated from Punjab University. The son of a parliamentarian Sat Paul Mittal, Sunil did not want to follow his father's footsteps. Sunil started in business (making cycle parts in Ludhiana, India) in 1976 at the age of 18 with borrowed capital of Rs 20,000. Later he started operating from Delhi and Mumbai, india, mainly importing and distributing products. His imports mainly included portable generators from Japan. In 1982 when government banned the import of portable generators then he introduced the push button phones in India and by the early 1990s he was making fax machines, cordless phones and telecom gear. After been awarded license for mobile phone services Bharti Cellular Limited (BCL) was formed in 1995 to offer cellular services under the name AirTel which is now India’s largest telecom business operator. In November 2006, he struck a joint venture deal with Wal-Mart, the US retail giant, to start a number of retail stores across India.

Sunil Mittal, father of twin sons and a daughter operates his business with his two brothers Rakesh and Rajan. About his early business life he says that the period from 1976-1985 was a period of great struggle, a period of great pain but a period of great learning and it was not so easy to establish oneself in the market as it was not as open as today but when they went in telecom in 1985-86 and manufactured telephone instruments, there was clearly a vision and foresight that this industry will do well. In spite of his deep involvement in work, Mittal the man, is calm, seldom ruffled and very down to earth. He says he achieves a sense of detachment and peace with regular practice of yoga. Sunil Mittal says that to be successful one has to have a positive frame of mind through which he has made virtue of extremely bad situations. For his business model he admires the uncompromising image of Tatas and business blend of Ambanis. He has been very conscious about his social obligations and have set up the Bharti Foundation. In Madhya Pradesh, India, his Bharti AirTel has funded 50-odd schools. He has also given Rs 200 million to IIT Delhi for building a Bharti School of Technology and Management.