The Ideal Beginning

Mittal started his first business in 1976, which was to make crankshafts for local bicycle manufacturers with a capital investment of 20000, borrowed from his father, when he was only 18 years of age.By 1979, Mittal moved to Mumbai, since he thought Ludhiana was not the place for the fulfillment of his ambitions.Later, in the early 1980s he bought licenses of importing from the exporting companies in Punjab and imported thousand of portable electric power generators from Japan.But suddenly the Indian Government banned the import of generators and all but two licenses were canceled.In 1984, Mittal came up with an idea and started assembling push button phones in India, which were earlier imported by a Taiwan Company, Kingtel, and replaced the old, bulky rotator phones in the country.

It was then, that Bharti Telecommunication Limited was incorporated and tied up in a technical bond with the Siemens AG of Germany for the manufacture of these push button phones. Towards the beginning of the 1990s, Mittal had started making fax machines, cordless phones and other such telecommunication gears. His first series of push button phones was named Mitbro.In 1992, came the lucky break, when the government, for the very first time, began issuing licenses for the mobile phone service. He bid for one license out of the four to be issued and was successful, since one condition was that the bidder should have some experience as a telecommunication operator.Mittal was the very first Indian entrepreneur who saw the mobile telecommunication business as a major growth area. Once his ideas and plan of actions were approved by the government in 1994, Bharti Cellular Limited (BCL) was founded in 1995 and the brand Airtel was launched.The BCL played a major role in bringing a major downfall in the STD and Local rates under a brand name Indiaone. To create Bharti Comtel, Mittal even attracted many key executives from Reliance ADAG, NIS Sparta. A joint venture deal with the Wal mart, the US retail giant was struck by Mittal in November 2006, to start a chain of retail stores across India.