Bharti pushes for data for growth

With an eye on the potential data driven services - Bharti Group merged its
erstwhile three divisions Bharti BT, Bharti VSAT and Bharti Broadband network to
form Bharti Infotel Ltd in the year 2001. Zia Askari of CyberMedia News spoke to
Bharti Infotel CEO Rajiv K Sharma about the company’s progress in general and
plans for the near future in particular.

How has been the journey for Bharti so far? How do you see the company
moving up the value chain?

At the time when we started our operations in the year 2001, we used to
incur losses of about Rs 5 crore on a monthly basis. Slowly, the company
realized that to be able to make profits, it would have to reach out to its
customers. We started focusing on corporate data segment for our leased line
connectivity or WAN services. The response was good and now we have more than
800 companies as our customers and over 250 of them are large organizations.

Now, of course the scenario has changed and there is vibrancy in the air. The
market is really on an upswing, more and more people are going in for data
solutions and now we have an early advantage of being an end-to-end
connecti-vity solution provider. The data market is around Rs 3,000 crore mark
now and is moving fast. By next year it will surely touch the Rs 5,000 crore
mark.

Moving up the value chain for us means that we would like to be a force to
reckon with, when it comes to end-to-end connectivity solutions. So far the
journey has been good for us and excellent times are ahead now.

What kind of expansion plans do you have for the near future?

At a time when most of the operators are finding it tough to bridge the last
mile connec-tivity, Bharti has outlined an expansion plan to overcome this
problem. Now we are on our way to expand to more than 35 cities for our data and
connectivity business. So once we are there in these extra locations like
Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Lucknow etc, we would be in a better
position to provide end-to-end connectivity even in smaller areas of the
country.

Presently, the company is charging Rs 8 lakh to Rs 9 lakh for 2 MB
connectivity. The company has earmarked an investment of close to Rs 100 crore
for this expansion and the money would be invested over the next one year.

At a time when most of the big operators are going in towards innovative
services, what is Bharti planning to do on this front?

As we move forward, we are looking forward to introducing a RF based
Internet connecti-vity solution in the country. The solution has already been
designed and would provide broadband connectivity rang-ing from 64 kbps to 256
kbps to its users. It is based on IP radio of 2.3 Mhz frequency. Once
operational, this solution would require a central base station to be set up by
Bharti and Internet connectivity can be provided within a radius of 5 kms with
that.

Technical trials for this technology are going on at various locations and we
are looking forward to launch this in all the metros by the end of July this
year.

Bharti strongly competes with BSNL and other big operators. Why shouldn’t
your customers migrate to a solution provided by a BSNL or Reliance?

Availability to provide three-tier solution set in fiber, satellite and
mobile–is positioning Bharti as one of the front-runners in the Indian data
scenario. We are in a good position now, so if we talk about migration of our
customers to BSNL or some other solution provider then it is a cumbersome task.
Cus-tomers tend to be loyal in this line of business. Hence, we are in a better
position to grow big from here. Bullish on the data market, we are quite sure of
generating Rs 500 crore from its data business.