Bharti Airtel is a public limited company commonly known as Airtel. It is an Indian telecom company, which is currently operating its business across South Asia, Africa, and the Channel Islands. It provides GSM in all the countries including 2G and 3G services. Due to its operations in more than 18 countries, Airtel is currently known as the 3rd largest mobile network operator across the globe with over a billion users and the 2nd largest mobile network operator in India.
Bharti Airtel’s Indian Customer Base, as of March 31, 2020, looked like this –
- 283.7 million Mobile Services
- 2.4 million homes
- 16.6 million Digital TV Services
Along with being one of India’s largest integrated telecom providers in India, Airtel is also famously ranked by Millward Brown and WPP plc in the first-ever Brandz ranking as the most valuable brand. At the end of September 2020, Airtel had around 440 Mn customers across its operations. It was known as the 3rd largest cellular service provider in India after beating China Unicom with 303 million subscribers, when reported back in August 2015.
Along with the telephony network that Airtel provides, where the company offers prepaid and postpaid networks, it also offers broadband and DTH services for its customers. It also acts as a carrier for national and international long distances communication services. The company has a submarine cable landing station in Chennai which connects the submarine cable between Chennai and Singapore. One of the other services provided by Airtel is the Airtel Money (commerce platform in collaboration with Infosys).
Airtel is also hailed as the first Telco to launch Multiplex in Metaverse, a milestone it achieved when it unveiled Metaverse multiplex on the PartyNite Metaverse platform, which is the first Metaverse multiplex in India.
On this note, let’s look at this StartupTalky Bharti Airtel company profile, which brings the Airtel case study, competitions, Bharti Airtel subsidiaries, products, Airtel employees, Airtel telecom founded in, Airtel net worth, hiring culture, policies, Airtel’s history, Airtel’s customer base, achievements, and more.
Bharti Airtel – Company Highlights
| Company Name | Bharti Airtel Limited |
|---|---|
| Established | July 7, 1995 (as a Public ltd. company) |
| Corporate Office | New Delhi |
| Funding | $5.1+ Bn (2022) |
| Revenue | US$14 billion (2021) |
| CEO | Gopal Vittal |
| Founder | Sunil Bharti Mittal (Net Worth – $13.20 bn) |
| Listed in | BSE and NSE |
| Stock Exchange Symbol | NSE – BHARTIARTL, BSE – 532454 |
| Subsidiaries | Wynk, Airtel Digital TV, Airtel Xstream & more |
About Bharti Airtel
A Brief History of Bharti Airtel
Bharti Airtel – Name, Tagline and Logo
Bharti Airtel – Mission and Vision
Bharti Airtel as The Market Champion
Bharti Airtel – HR Strategies
Bharti Airtel – Service Rule and Regulation of Employees
Bharti Airtel – Promotion Policy and Wage Structure
Bharti Airtel – Training and Development of Employees
Bharti Airtel – Hiring Process
Bharti Airtel – Incentives and Benefits
Bharti Airtel – Partnerships
Bharti Airtel – Awards and Recognition
Bharti Airtel – Future Plans
Recommendations
Megha Rani
About Bharti Airtel
The name “Airtel” is something that is not only popular in India but has been a buzzword since the company was founded back in 1995. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, Bharti Airtel is a multinational telecommunication company with roots in the Indian subcontinent, which currently serves users of over 18 countries. The telecom giant has provided 2G, 3G, 4G+ and 4G LTE networks, fixed-line broadband connections, and voice services, which are based on the country of operation. Besides, it has also launched the Volte service.
The Bharti Airtel company outsources all of its business operations except marketing, sales, and finance and is often credited with being the pioneer of such a business model. Besides, many of today’s telecom service providers also look up to Airtel for the same, which are now working on similar business models. Besides, Airtel is also hailed as the pioneer of the minutes’ factory model of low-cost and high volumes. The equipment that Airtel uses are provided for and maintained by companies like Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia Networks. On the other hand, its IT support is provided by Amdocs.
A Brief History of Bharti Airtel
The Airtel founder, Sunil Mittal had primarily set up his business Bharti Overseas Trading Company in 1980, which was an import enterprise where he dealt with generators and more. Then he saw a push-button phone in Taiwan in 1984, seeing that he eventually started to assemble similar phones. Focusing on the same, he founded Bharti Telecom Limited in the early 1990s. Though he started with manufacturing fax machines, cordless phones, and other telecom gear, he soon discovered that the Indian government was inviting bids for mobile telephony in 1992, and Sunil was successful in bidding for one of the four mobile phone network licensed auctioned.
He later went for collaborating with the French telecom group Vivendi, which eventually agreed to do business with him in spite of Mr Mittal being a small timer at that time. This led him to launch his cellular services in Delhi in 1995. Thus, Bharti Cellular Limited was formed to offer cellular services under the brand name AirTel. In 1996, cellular service extended to Himachal Pradesh. In 1999, the Bharti Enterprise went on to acquire control of JT holdings and extended cellular operations to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Then, in 2000, Bharti acquired control over Skycell communications in Chennai.
In 2001, the company acquired control of the Spice cell in Kolkata. Next, the company got listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange. In 2003, all the cellular phone operations of the company were summed up under the single brand of Airtel. Airtel then acquired control over Hexcom and entered Rajasthan in 2005. It then extended its network all across India in 2005 and launched its first international mobile network in Sri Lanka.
It was under the direction of the company’s Founder, Mr Sunil Bharti Mittal that the company became very successful and within a few years, AirTel turned into the first telecom company to cross the 2-million mobile subscriber mark.
On 13th February 2008, Bharti Airtel Limited, the leading telecommunication company in India, crossed the 60 million customer mark. The wireless segment constituted 96% of BAL total customer base. The valuation of BAL then stood at $40 billion in 2008. BA was the fastest in the world and added 8 million customers in 2008. This puts Bharti Airtel among the top telecom companies in the world. Its next target was to reach 100 million mark by 2010. This was also crossed by the company. Airtel is currently standing with a subscriber base of around 354.40 million subscribers in 2021.
Shruti Jalan
Bharti Airtel – Name, Tagline and Logo
Airtel’s actual name was Bharti Cellular Limited (BCL), the company which later began to offer cellular services under the brand name AirTel.
“AISI AZADI AUR KAHAN” is one of the prominent taglines adopted by Airtel.
Bharti Airtel – Mission and Vision
“Hunger to win customers for life” is the mission of Airtel.
“Our vision is to enrich the lives of our customers. Our obsession is to win customers for life through an exceptional experience.” – says the Vision statement of the brand.
Bharti Airtel as The Market Champion
Airtel strives to align its HR strategies with its corporate strategy. The HR team makes sure to see if the organization teams have the same attitude that would help employees realize the vision of the company. The company emphasizes recruiting young people with an average age of 26 years. This is done because the company wants to bring in young entrants and would them as per the business organization and at the same time, enhance their interaction and creativity.
Senior management was advised by the HR management as they are encouraged to put forward their views openly in order, to play a more proactive role in team-building efforts. This was further augmented by a reward and recognition system along with a strong training program. As a part of the planning process, the entire organization is measured on five performance parameters, which includes its financial performance, profitability, market share, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction.
Bharti Airtel – Growth
Bharti Airtel has grown hugely throughout the years in the telecommunication sector. The company is currently spread across 18+ different countries including those in South Asia, Africa, and the Channel Islands. Building a big name for itself, Airtel is currently known as the second-largest mobile network in India along with being the second-largest mobile network in the world.
Along with offering an efficient mobile network, Airtel also brings a wide array of products and services to its customers:
- Broadband
- Digital television
- Banking
- Business
- Android-based tablet
Airtel unveiled on June 14, 2022, it’s first, which is, in fact, India’s first Metaverse platform on the PartyNite Metaverse platform. Xstream multiplex, which Airtel launched, is designed as a 20-screen platform and will be an extension of Airtel’s Xstream Premium offering. Such a platform will leverage the content library of Airtel and will offer many more layers of engagement, thereby allowing the users to interact on the PartyNite Metaverse. This new Airtel multiplex will offer a sampling of the original shows and movies in many other languages along with those in English and Hindi.
Airtel and Jio, it seems, are quite locked together to gain market share in India. According to the TRAI data for April 2022, Jio held a 35.5% market share in the wireless telecom market of the country whereas Airtel was positioned at the second spot with a market share that equalled 31.61%.
Google has picked up a minor and non-controlling 1.28% stake in Airtel for $700 mn, as per the reports dated July 1, 2022. The deal comes after around 5 months since it was proposed. This deal is part of the larger Google For India Digitisation Fund, which the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, announced in July 2020. The tech behemoth also said then that it would keep an additional $300 mn worth of funds for potential multi-year commercial agreements with Airtel. This investment in Bharti Airtel marks the second Google investment in India. The first was when Google invested $4.5 bn in Jio in 2020, picking up a 7.73% stake in the company. This investment from Google will help both Airtel and Google to ramp up the telco’s enterprise cloud solutions, which are being operated currently with Amazon. The deal would also help both parties to work unitedly to create an array of affordable Android devices in partnership with the device manufacturers. Moreover, the deal would also help them develop 5G use cases specific to India and create multiple network solutions. The shares of Airtel were allocated on July 14, 2022, when Bharti Airtel approved the allotment of more than 71.17 crore shares to Google at an issue price of Rs 734, which includes a premium of Rs 729 per equity share. In the conclusion of this, Google’s stakes in Airtel stand at 1.20% of the total post-equity shares or 1.17% of the telecom company on a fully-diluted basis.
Airtel Financials and Revenues
The average revenue per user of Airtel rose to Rs 178 crore in the January-March quarter of 2022. This rise was mainly due to the strong user additions, higher tariffs, and one-time gains. The consolidated net profits of Airtel increased by 164% to become Rs 2008 crore in FY22.
Alan Joseph
Bharti Airtel- Service Rule and Regulation of Employees
In Airtel, you are an at-will employee, this means you are working at your own will without any force or pressure before you join the company. You must sign terms and condition agreement that will state the corporate governance of the company which is:
- Employees must report to their superiors and maintain disciplinary work.
- All employees will be paid monthly by cheque procedure.
- In case of leave, employees must draft a detailed application mentioning the reason for leave.
- A lunch break of 1 Hour will be provided.
Bharti Airtel- Promotion Policy and Wage Structure
AirTel engages a policy under which an employee gets his/her due promotion in the organization, which is a reward for an excellent performance. Under the rules that govern the promotion, AirTel states that the employee must have successfully completed 6 months to be eligible for promotion in Airtel. The internal application process is carried out and all the previous records are checked and the performance is analyzed.
The internal relationship between different jobs and wages helps the firm to decide its wage structure. 60% of its employees have a variable pay structure where they get paid according to the work done. The company considers factors such as performance and maintains internal equity to ensure people at the same level are paid for the same amount of work.
Bharti Airtel – Training and Development of Employees
Airtel has a vast pool of human resources that are upgraded from time to time in terms of leadership and technical skills through various outsourced and in-house training and development activities such as process and project management skills and technical skills. By providing world-class resources and combined efforts by Airtel many employees are being trained to become future leaders. The company’s HR is continuously working on launching various initiatives like on-job training, programmed learning, simulated development, and computed-based training.
The on-job training is where a person learns a job actually doing it. Every employee from the mailroom, from a clerk to the CEO, gets job training when they join the company. Informal learning is used as 80% of the employees learn on the job they learn not through informal training, including performing their jobs on a daily basis in collaboration with their colleagues.
The company provides a job instruction training program that takes place every month in Airtel in which a logical sequence of steps is taught step by step. On a quarterly basis programmed learning is followed by Airtel in which self-learning methods consist of Presenting questions, facts, or problems to the learner and allowing the person to respond.
Ashwini
Bharti Airtel – Hiring Process
- Application – In Airtel existing openings are monitored and accordingly position procedures are being carried out matching candidates’ profiles and areas of interest.
- Screening – Matching of the profile is done by the company with respect to its requirements and needs.
- Assessment – An aptitude test is required for the job of the front line sales. For considering the middle and senior-level job occupational personality questionnaire was done.
- Interview – Airtel takes 1 to 3 rounds for the interview process. Then the final appointment letter is being offered with the company’s terms & conditions memo, which every employee must sign.
Ashwini
Bharti Airtel – Incentives and Benefits
Airtel has an incentive pay scheme managers often use two terms synonymously incentive plan for the employees that are applicable to sales over the target achieved. Merit pay as incentives is generally done by the company for excellent performance by the employee in the last term of his/her employment. The other non-monetary incentives include Employee recognition, Gifts, Special events, merchandise incentives, and free training programs.
When it comes to the benefits, they are indirect financial and non-financial payments employees receive for continuing their employment. They include things like health and life insurance pensions, time off with pay, and child care assistance. The company also provides Life and Health insurance for families and dependents. Different types of leaves like study leave, extraordinary leave, petrol allowance, and family holidays.
Along with helping the employees on many different fronts, Airtel also cares for others as well, especially the startups of today.
Airtel Launches Startup Accelerator Program to Support Startups
Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s largest integrated telecommunications company, announced the launch of its Startup Accelerator Program on October 25, 2019, to support the growth of early-stage Indian tech startups. With the advent of its Start-up Accelerator Program, Airtel aims to support the creation of a vibrant startup ecosystem that contributes to “Digital India”.
Through Airtel’s Startup Accelerator, early startups get access to Airtel’s online and offline distribution network, deep market understanding, and ecosystem of global strategic partners. In addition, Airtel has also developed strong in-house capabilities around machine learning and artificial intelligence, which could be leveraged to aid the growth of startups. Furthermore, startups also get access to advisory services from Airtel’s executive team.
Vahan was the first to join Airtel Startup Accelerator. Airtel announced the induction of Bengaluru-based tech startup Vahan into its Startup Accelerator Program. Airtel will acquire a stake in Vahan and partner with them in building a significant scale to achieve their vision of enabling jobs for the next billion internet users. Founded in 2016 and backed by Y Combinator and Khosla Ventures, Vahan leverages advanced Artificial Intelligence to match job seekers with employers inside messaging apps such as Whatsapp. It is focused on finding blue collar jobs for millions of young Indians in Delivery, Driving, Retail, BFSI, BPO and Hospitality sectors with companies such as Zomato, Swiggy and Dunzo as clients.
Adarsh Nair, Chief Product Officer, Bharti Airtel said:
Today, early stage startups in India have some very exciting ideas but face multiple challenges in scaling up. With Airtel’s scale and digital capabilities around distribution and payments, we have the potential to drive accelerated growth of emerging startups that are solving hard problems. The team at Vahan is doing some incredible work to bring jobs to millions of people through AI based technology. We are excited to partner with them on this vision.
Madhav Krishna, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Vahan, said: “
Airtel will be a key partner for us as we look to solve a hard problem for Bharat. Most blue-collar job seekers are unaware of the opportunities that exist in the market, especially new-age on-demand jobs. Airtel’s distribution channels will help us reach the very depths of the country and in turn, help millions of Indians take control of their economic destiny. We are incredibly excited about this partnership.
Bharti Airtel – Partnerships
Bharti Airtel has seen a considerable number of partnerships and collaborations to date. Some of them are mentioned below:
- Bharti Airtel partnered with Apollo Hospitals and Cisco on April 28, 2022, in order to help in the development of state-of-the-art ambulances that will be equipped with Airtel 5G.
- The company partnered with Mavenir for open radio access network-based 5G field trials. The first Open RAN-based 5G NSA validation was done on April 5, 2022.
- Airtel and Tech Mahindra partnered together to “build and market innovative solutions for India’s digital economy by bringing together their core strengths”, said an Airtel PR dated March 31, 2022.
- A PR rolled out by Airtel on December 14, 2021, stated that the company partnered with Capgemini to announce 5G-based enterprise-grade solutions to the Indian market.
- Bharti Airtel and TCS collaborated to build a 5G-based remote working technology using robotics on December 2, 2021.
- BlueJeans – Bharti partnered with Verizon to launch BlueJeans, a video conferencing platform like JioMeet. The platform can accommodate 50,000 attendees and is simple and intuitive to use. With the launch of BlueJeans, Airtel and Verizon tend to provide a safer video conferencing experience to the customers. Hans Vestberg, Chief Executive Officer of Verizon, said during a virtual press conference that the data of all the customers will be hosted in India and stored within the data centres all over India. The per-call costs have also been dropped to INR 0.50. It is also having the Airtel Auto Bridge feature, which allows users to benefit from an unlimited calling feature within the National/International range. This new feature also consists of HD video calling with Dolby voice support. It also allows users to schedule, join or host the meets with the one-click feature. With the involvement of ‘Smart Meetings’ feature in BlueJeans it will allow the user to get hold of the important points and assign certain actions to the people. They are also trying to add certain packages for the enterprises in the upcoming days. Vittal said in a statement, “We will have three kinds of packages for our consumers one for large enterprise, the second one for medium, and the third for tiny or small business. We will reveal packages for BlueJeans over the next few days.” The company is also sure that the prices will be competitive. Airtel has been a new entry in the video conferencing sector shortly after the launch of JioMeet by Reliance Jio. Players from the telecom Industry entering the video conferencing sector will be interesting. It is making a great competitive market in this industry. BlueJeans was founded by Krish Ramakrishnan and Alagu Periyannan, in India only. The first prototype was tested back in 2009 and 2012 in Pune at the company’s research and department centre. However, Verizon, in May 2020, tried to acquire it and give it a boost. It will be interesting to see how things go in the upcoming days and brings us interesting content.
Ashwini
Bharti Airtel – Awards and Recognition
Some of the major achievements and milestones earned by Bharti Airtel are listed below –
- AirtelThanks App was recognized as one of the most innovative mobile application in the prestigious ET Telecom Awards 2020.
- Airtel won four awards in each category of Video Experience, Games Experience, Voice App Experience and Download Speed Experience in the Open Signal Report in September 2020, for the second time in a row.
- Airtel Xstream Fiber won the Best Broadband Service Provider in ET Telecom Awards 2020.
- Airtel ranked 4th in the category of “The top 10 most valuable Indian brands 2019” as per WPP Kantar Survey.
- Airtel Business won the “Best Partnership” award at Telecoms World Middle East Awards 2019 for partnering with Telecom Egypt.
- Airtel Business won 3 prestigious awards at Global Carrier Awards 2019, namely, Best Global Wholesale Carrier – Voice, Best Voice Service Innovation – Emerging Markets and Best Security Solution.
- Airtel Finance shared services team has bagged the coveted Digital Initiative Award by HDFC bank in the Large Customer Category.
- Airtel Business has been awarded as the “Enterprise Data Service Provider of the Year” and the “Enterprise Telecom Service Provider of the Year” in the large enterprise segment at the Frost and Sullivan ICT Awards
- App Annie ranked Wynk Music as India’s #1 music streaming app in terms of Daily Active Users in October 2019.
And the list goes on & on…
Bharti Airtel – Future Plans
Bharti Airtel is currently planning to launch its 5G services in the country. The Union Cabinet earlier gave its nod for the auction of 72 GHz of 5G spectrum, which is planned to be conducted in July 2022.
Recommendations
Bharti Airtel is currently doing incredibly well in recent times it is expected with same quality services and has the prospective to overtake China’s Unicom in a few years making Airtel one of the world leaders when it comes to being a world leader in telecommunication. This is possible because of the company’s expansion in African and Asian countries making it a global company. Airtel also has good relations with its business partners like Ericsson, Siemens, and IBM.
The company has strong HR policies that help in maintaining its corporate governance structure. The profit and assets are also increasing at a considerably good rate, making its turnover cross $643.25 bn. Good customer schemes and support services make Airtel capture a major chunk of the competitive market.
FAQs
What is the difference between Airtel and Bharti Airtel?
Bharti Airtel and Airtel are the same company, a subsidiary of Bharti Enterprises.
Is Bharti Airtel an Indian company?
Bharti Airtel Limited is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company.
How many employees are there in Airtel?
There were over 17K employees in Airtel in 2021.
When was Airtel founded?
Airtel was founded on July 7, 1995.
Who is the founder of Airtel?
Airtel was founded by Sunil Bharti Mittal.
What is the Airtel company owner’s name?
Bharti Airtel is a subsidiary owned by Bharti Enterprises.
