Organic Growth

Bharti enters mobile handset market

Bharti Airtel India today announced that they
will enter the lucrative mobile handset manufacturing business via its
subsidiary Beetel Teletech Limited.

According to Indian media reports,
Bharti is planning to serve the lower end with cheap mobile phones in the range
of Indian rupees. 1,750-7,000.

Making an announcement,
Beetel Teletech Limited (a Bharti Group firm) Executive Director and CEO Vinod
Sawhny said, “The market is huge and
there is a room for Indian players...Phones in the price range of Rs. 2,000-6,000
are witnessing 30 per cent growth and we plan to offer a good combination of
feature-rich phones at affordable prices.”

On the market,
which has a mix of leading global players like Nokia,
Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola
and home-grown companies like Micromax,
Karbonn and others, he said the
company was a long-term player and has set an ambitious target of being among the
top five players in the next three years.

Bharti Airtel through its subsidiary Bharti Airtel Sri Lanka
started its operations in Sri
Lanka in January 2009.