New Delhi: India’s leading telecom company Bharti is keen in leading international provider of telecommunication services Hutchison Telecom.
Bharti Group's head honcho Sunil Mittal says the company is interested in Hutchison only if Ruias approve.
"If the Ruias say we would like to talk to Bharti, then we come in. But if Hutch says so, it has no meaning for us," he says.
Speaking on Bharti's JV with Wal-Mart, Sunil Mittal says the Government hasn't objected to the joint venture to create a supply chain and cash & carry format that will eventually feed into Bharti's retail stores. Mittal insists all he had to do was file with the RBI for the Wal-Mart franchise agreement.
"We are not seeking any permissions. Our backend is not only meant for our front end. If you see current ventures, Metro already has few stores, Tata Woolworth has been signed, you don't need permissions. Tou just have to follow the existing policy which allows you an automatic approval for the backend. On the front end, we are not asking for FDI, it is a 100 per cent funded operation of Bharti," he said.
So how much money is Bharti investing in the retail venture? Mittal says it all depends on the real estate component. Bharti and Wal-Mart are still considering on whether to build their own real estate or lease it from realty players like the Ansals, DLF, Rahejas or even Bharti realty.
Bharti and its French partner AXA have big ambitions in the financial servies space. Sunil Mittal says AXA built itself into one of the world's largest insurance companies and Bharti-AXA hopes to do the same.
He says, "I think there is nothing available in the market. There was Sanmar Group, which was taken up, there are not many companies in the block today. But as we go forward, if there are opportunities we will do it. But we are strengthening our distribution - the Airtel customer base, we are trying to do bank insurance, we are looking at a number of agents. I would say that on bank insurance, we will strike something soon and on the Airtel side, a lot of work is going on. The early response in pilots is very healthy, so we could stump the market very quickly through our larger customer base that we have."
And on Bharti's first love - telecom, it's been a year since Vodafone invested in Bharti Televentures and now it wants more - as much as it can get. So is Vodafone in talks to buy a stake from the other big stakeholder Singtel? Mittal believes Vodafone wants to buy more but Bharti wants public floats and they will not allow them to go into the market.
On being asked why Bharti would not allow Vodafone to do so, he says "I think we have raised enough money, large amounts of money have been raised for AXA, for Wal-Mart and more. We can do a few more projects, we have raised a large amount in the last one year and there's no point having money in the bank. We rather have it in the business and will Singapore serve, I do not know."
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