In Business There Are No Foes, Only Friends
unil Mittal doesn’t show it. But there’s a very good chance that deep inside, he is feeling heady and excited again, after a long time.
Of course, when Airtel hit 100 million customers in May, he hosted a gala dinner for his business partners, where A.R. Rahman performed live. When his daughter got married in June, the guest list couldn’t have been more impressive: Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, L.K. Advani and some of the biggest names from the world of business. He had been seen swapping phone numbers with Cherie Blair. He won a nomination to the prestigious Carnegie endowment board. Clearly, his social life is buzzing.
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Image: Dinesh Krishnan
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Sunil Mittal has come a long way but still yearns for the entrepreneurial adventure of his early days. MTN may just be the answer | |
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But there’s nothing like the anticipation of snagging a deal that he almost lost. Imagine talking marriage to someone who ditched you at the last minute, at your terms and at a better bargain. Sweet, huh?
For the 52-year-old chairman and group CEO of Bharti Enterprises, this is that moment. One year after being spurned by the African telcom giant MTN, he is now busy sewing up the deal. The two companies are in exclusive talks till July 31. The likely merger will create a $23-billion emerging market giant that will straddle India, the Gulf and Africa — populous geographies with close to 2.5 billion people and 200 million plus customers. It will also make the combo the third largest mobile operator in the world with over 200 million customers in 25 plus countries.
When MTN left Bharti high and dry last year, Mittal admitted that it had really hurt. It’s a “question of my ego,” he confided in a rival telecom CEO.
In his 30-year journey from an imported-scrap dealer to India’s largest telecom player, he has built and rebuilt businesses many times over — at times pushed by fatal policies and sometimes nudged by his surging dreams. But he always came back with a bigger dream and a bigger plan. He did it when he was small and a virtual nobody. But amid all the success and all-round glory — both personal and entrepreneurial — that came later, last year’s rebuff must have been unsettling. So be sure that Mittal will do everything possible to get this deal through — navigate the regulatory hurdles, sell the plan to the board and shareholders and also devise a synergy plan that finally delivers value.
By all accounts, this will be a transformational deal. This will easily be the biggest overseas M&A deal by an Indian company. It will also give Sunil Mittal, the entrepreneur, the next fix that he desperately needs. By now, the domestic telecom business is on auto pilot. For the past five years, Mittal tried his hand at retail, insurance and agriculture. He picked the best companies in the world — Wal-Mart, AXA and Rothschild — to partner him. (Rothschild was later replaced by Del Monte). But the results haven’t come through as yet. Replicating the same Airtel success has proven elusive. So now, Mittal is focussing on telecom all over again. Except that this time, he has an entirely new agenda.
Pulling off a cross-border merger of equals is a challenge that Bharti has never faced before. And India Inc. — and the world — will be watching his every move. With the global downturn, India Inc.’s globalisation drive has already hit a massive speed breaker. Many of Mittal’s peers, including Ratan Tata and K.M. Birla, are struggling to prevent their M&A deals from turning sour.
Despite the talk of a recovery, for the most part, banks are still running scared, credit rating agencies are watching like hawks and markets remain cautious. In this environment, a multi-billion dollar deal could almost single-handedly lift business spirits — and help fight off the despondency.
Yet there’s something that might well be bothering Mittal — something that goes beyond business and beyond Bharti. Once upon a time, he wanted to retire at the age of 50. He was passionate about nation-building and began talking about it long before it became fashionable. Today, that’s the new Holy Grail for successful entrepreneurs. Amassing personal wealth and incredible business success isn’t enough. There’s a yearning to contribute meaningfully through public life. That holds a special meaning for Mittal. “He would have watched Nandan [Nilekani] from the sidelines,” says Tarun Das, chief mentor of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Somewhere in his mind, Mittal has begun the countdown. “Nandan prepared himself extremely well... I haven’t cleared my desk yet,” he says. But can he really prepare his organisation for a life beyond him, after him?
NEXT PAGE: Q&A with Sunil Bharti Mittal
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