Bharti Retail, owned by Sunil Mittal's Bharti Enterprises, on Wednesday started retail operations in the country with neighbourhood store format, Easy Day, from Ludhiana in Punjab. Bharti has set up three stores in Ludhiana.Bharti has announced plans to invest Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) to set up stores across the country by 2012. The company said that it is looking at a retail space of 10 million square feet and employ 60,000 people.
Bharti Group, which has bid for modernisation of the Delhi airport, would consider taking up similar jobs for other non-metro airports if it wins the bid, its chief Sunil Mittal said on Tuesday.
US retail giant Wal-Mart, which has signed a joint venture with the Bharti Group for wholesale cash and carry business, will restrict itself to technical support and training in Sunil Mittal firm's foray into retail.
Bharti Airtel said net sales rose 7.9 per cent
Zain Telecom on Wednesday said it would earn $3.3 billion from sale of its African assets to Bharti Airtel for $10.7 billion even as the Indian operator said the deal is well-priced.
US retail chain Walmart is awaiting a decision by its board decision on its India strategy, including its partnership with the Bharti group.
India's second-largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Tuesday posted more than twofold year-on-year jump in its consolidated net profit for the March quarter to Rs 2,008 crore, buoyed by a lift in average revenue per user and an exceptional gain. The telco said its Q4 scorecard was backed by strong performance delivery across the portfolio and its CEO Gopal Vittal, in a statement, exuded optimism about opportunities in the coming years and Airtel being "well-poised" as a company. Airtel, which competes in the market with Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea, as well as state-owned BSNL/MTNL, promised to maintain razor sharp focus on financial flexibility, optimising the capital structure and finance cost.
The Bharti group has applied to the government for a licence to operate direct-to-home television services.
Sunil Mittal is seeking subsidies from the Indian government to revive the dying fixed-line phones in the country. The chairman of Bharti Airtel, the leading private sector GSM service provider, has sought the removal of licence fee and service tax that are burdening the sector.
Bharti Retail, a subsidiary of Bharti Enterprises, on Monday said it will increase the head count to 60,000 by 2015 from 2,000 now as it has set a target to become a $1-billion company by then.
Bharti Teletech, India's largest fixed line phone manufacturer and flagship of the AirTel Group, on Friday announced its entry into digital set top boxes used for the direct-to-home services with an initial investment of $2 million.
Bharti Retail exuded confidence that it is 'on course' to become a billion dollar company by 2015, and will open 40 more stores in the next three months notwithstanding the economic slowdown.
Bharti Airtel on Tuesday said there was no government scrutiny on the company's decision to buy back 5.6 per cent stake from Vodafone and the transaction was within the foreign investment norms in the telecom sector.
After dominating the Indian mobile telephone market, Bharti Airtel is all set to launch 3-in-1 services - phone, internet and cable TV - across 90 cities to its fixed-line customers.
Bharti Wal-Mart Pvt Ltd, the joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and retail giant Wal-Mart, opened its first cash-and-carry (wholesale) store in India at Amritsar.
State-owned telecom major BSNL has awarded a major chunk of its international traffic to UK and Europe to Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti, virtually eliminating incumbent carrier VSNL.\n
Sunil Mittal-promoted Bharti Enterprises, offering telecom services, on Wednesday picked up 4.99 per cent stake in private sector Bank of Punjab for a consideration of Rs 24.52 crore (Rs 245.2 million).
The Wall Street Journal quoting two people familiar with the situation said Bharti has contacted West Asian sovereign wealth funds for additional cash to back its MTN bid for a majority stake. Further, the paper quoted another person and said that Bharti has already negotiated about $12 billion in financing from a group of banks that includes Standard Chartered PLC, but the deal may require more resources.
India's telecom subscriber base grew to over 1.17 billion in October with Bharti Airtel maintaining its leadership in mobile subscriber addition that accounts for over 98 per cent of total connections in the country, according to the monthly report released by sector regulator Trai on Wednesday. This is the second consecutive month when Airtel added highest number of subscribers. In September, it had regained the leadership position in subscriber addition after a gap of four years. The Sunil Bharti Mittal-led company added 3.67 million new customers in October, taking its total wireless customer base to 330.28 million in October 2020, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai) report said.
Indian mobile phone users will have to pay more if the service providers are charged for spectrum, which was earlier given free to the operators, chairman of the country's largest telecom company Bharti Airtel Sunil Mittal has said.
After the transaction with Temasek, Singtel will hold 47.39 per cent in Bharti Telecom.
Bharti will have to deal with 15 different regulatory regimes in Africa as opposed to just one in India.
Even as the government deferred the decision to enhance foreign investment limit in telecom, Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Group said on Thursday that its offer to buy Canadian TIW's 27.5 per cent stake in Hexacom has been terminated
The auction last year had seen a muted response on account of high spectrum cost.
Bharti Group chairman Sunil Mittal on Tuesday said the unified licensing regime proposed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India could not be pursued in its present form, as it was in contradiction of the TDSAT judgement.
GSM operators lobby COAI has already challenged the norms announced by Department of Telecom on October 19, which include allowing dual technology for mobile services and enhanced subscriber-linked criteria for spectrum allocation. In view of protests by GSM operators, the Centre had asked Telecom Engineering Centre, the technical wing of DoT, to study the norms as suggested by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
The Bharti Group will on Monday announce a tie-up with Walmart for its retail operations, under which the world's largest retailer would manage the back end operations.
Telecom player Bharti on Thursday said it would pass on the full benefits of the cut in Access Deficit Charge to its subscribers from February 1, when the new regime comes into effect.
Several leading industrialists, including Reliance Industries CMD Mukesh Ambani, Vedanta Resources Limited executive chairman Anil Agarwal, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons Ratan Tata, Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra, Paytm Founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Welspun Group chairman and Assocham president B K Goenka, attended the swearing-in ceremony.
Telecom giant Bharti Airtel on Wednesday called off discussions with MTN for the $23-billion merger deal saying the South African government has rejected the proposed structure.
Sunil Mittal promoted Bharti Group garnered the largest subscriber base of 37.50 lakh (3.75 million), followed by BSNL and Hutchison Group.\n
Bharti Group offering mobile services under AirTel brand has become the first private telecom conglomerate to complete nationwide network in all 23 circles at an investment of Rs 15,000 crore (Rs 150 billion) till now.
Bharti group on Tuesday announced a whopping $13 billion investment for the next five years of which at least 70 per cent would go into expansion of domestic telecom operations
In yet another major outsourcing deal, Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Group on Tuesday entered into a over Rs 580 crore ($125 million) deal with telecom major Nokia to expand the network in eight circles.
Bharti Airtel is understood to have entered into an agreement with IBM for managing its IT and network-related services.
The telecom to look at opportunities to acquire another firm in India.
The key team members are in place. Prateek Agrawal, the equity head is from ABN AMRO AMC, Sujay Das, the fixed income head came from DSP Merrill Lynch AMC and Nanda Kishore S, the marketing head is from Sundaram BNP Paribas AMC. Dasgupta himself is from Deutsche AMC. Bharti-AXA has a 35-member strong team, which would be expanded to 70 by June.
After ending its wholesale partnership with Walmart, Bharti Retail has decided to merge with the Future group
Sunil Mittal-promoted Bharti Group on Friday announced a net profit of Rs 619 crore (Rs 6.19 billion) during the 2003-04 fiscal as against a loss of Rs 134 crore (Rs 1.34 billion) in the previous fiscal.
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