Sunil Mittal just can't stop talking about the "Infosys campus" he is building. No, the 48-year-old Chairman of Bharti Enterprises is not getting into the it services business; his reference is to a model farm the company's agriculture arm, FieldFresh, a 50:50 joint venture with the Rothschild family after which the reticent financial conglomerate is named (the venture is with ELRo Holdings India, a company founded by Sir Evelyn and Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild), is developing on 300 acres of land in Ladhowal, Punjab. Instead of arrays of coders, it will have arrays of every kind of vegetable known to man and then some. "It will be the best model farm in the country," gushes Mittal. "When our customers come down (to India), we'll take them there." And then, in the same breath, "Have you noticed any difference in the quality of okra you buy in the market?"

Ten years after the beginning of the mobile telephony era, its poster boy, Mittal, also the Chairman and CEO of Bharti Tele-Ventures in which Bharti Enterprises holds a 45.9 per cent stake, is moving on, part of a journey that he hopes will create, in another 10 years, a conglomerate "like the Tata Group or ITC". That doesn't mean he plans to exit telecommunications altogether, by selling out to a global telco such as Vodafone that is seeking a toehold in the Indian market. A question on this has become de rigueur in every interaction Mittal has with the media; for the record, the answer is "We are not available." (see "People Like Me Never Retire"). Actually, any company that acquires Bharti Tele-Ventures will end up with more than a toehold in the booming Indian telecom market. The telco closed last year (April 2004-March 2005) with Rs 8,002 crore in revenues and Rs 1,498 crore in net profits and its July 2004-June 2005 revenues have crossed the $2 billion (Rs 8,800 crore)-mark; in three months ended June 30, 2005, it registered Rs 2,517 crore in revenues and earned Rs 510 crore in net profits; at last count, the company boasted a subscriber base of around 13 million, which translates into a market share of between 21 per cent and 22 per cent; and as this magazine goes to press, the Bharti Tele-Ventures' stock is trading at Rs 319.70, close to its all-time high of Rs 325 (that translates into a market value of Rs 59,890.3 crore for the company).

Insurance & Financial Services PARTNER: AXA Asia Pacific Life Insurance Company INVESTMENT: Rs 500 crore over two-three years PLANS: To sell insurance like it has done mobile telephony services; and across the 5,200 cities and towns where it has a presence MITTAL'S TAKE: "Both insurance and telecom require handling a large number of consumers, both are annuity businesses and both are highly regulated"

Agriculture PARTNER: ELRo (A Rothschild company) INVESTMENT: $50 million (Rs 220 crore) over three years PLANS: To have some 30,000 acres under cultivation in the next three years, and grow to at least a billion dollars (Rs 4,400 crore) MITTAL'S TAKE: "Ours is a pioneering effort and it will be big"

Airport Infrastructure PARTNER: Changi Airport Managers & Partners and DLF Universal Limited INVESTMENT: Project still in bid stage; unlikely to exceed a few hundred million dollars (Rs 400-600 crore) PLANS: To make Delhi airport a showpiece with malls, multiplexes, superior aircraft and passenger handling facilities and the like, and eventually build airports all over North India MITTAL'S TAKE: "If there's some part of the country's infrastructure that needs to be gold-plated, it is this"

Telecommunications PARTNER: SingTel INVESTMENT: Rs 4,000-5,000 crore this year PLANS: Continue to explore new price points; grow the subscriber base to 25 million over the next two-three years; tap global opportunities if they make sense MITTAL'S TAKE: "Telecom is no longer just telecom; there are so many avenues for growth"

Agriculture is just one of the businesses Bharti Enterprises has entered: there's insurance (which will grow into mutual funds and other financial services), which the company has entered through a JV with the AXA Group, a $121.6-billion or Rs 5,35,040-crore (it ranks 13 in Fortune's global 500) French conglomerate that is the world's largest insurance firm in terms of revenues; and there's the around $2-billion (Rs 8,800-crore) project to build a world-class airport in Delhi for which the government has just called for bids (competition is intense, and one of the government's key allies wants the entire project scrapped, but Mittal insists that if Bharti manages to win this bid, it will move on to building airports in smaller cities). If all goes well, says Mittal, in 10 years, "less than 50 per cent of our revenues could come from telecommunications". That could explain why the man now speaks of okras and social security with the same passion that he once reserved for all things telecom.

The Airports Man

Rajan Mittal Jt Managing Director, Bharti Enterprises In the next two months, Bharti will know whether the consortium headed by it and comprising Changi Airport Managers & Partners, the company that built Singapore's showpiece airport (it helps that Bharti is a respected name in the city-state; the Singapore Government-owned SingTel owns a 30.84 per cent stake in Bharti Tele-Ventures; Changi is also owned by the Singapore Government), and DLF Universal Limited has won its bid to build and manage the Delhi airport. Should that happen, Rajan Mittal, who has hitherto been spearheading Airtel's marketing initiatives, will find his hands full managing a $2-billion (Rs 8,800-crore) project. Right now, he is busy preparing the bid (and is keeping his fingers crossed).

The Right Connection

If there's something that links Bharti's successful run in telecommunications to its foray into agriculture, insurance and airport infrastructure (there is), it has to transcend the significant (but obvious) fact that it is Bharti Tele-Ventures that has given Bharti Enterprises the financial wherewithal and the confidence to diversify into new businesses (as also the standing to attract partners such as the Rothschilds and AXA). This may be the 2000s and the 1990s' favourite management buzzword, core competence, may be beginning to look worn, but Mittal himself has always believed in it. "We have always been very clear that we will not move away from our core competence," he says. It's just that he sees Bharti's core competence different from the way others do. "We have never seen the telecom business as a technology one," says Akhil Gupta, Jt Managing Director, Bharti Tele-Ventures, an old-time Bharti hand and a trusted aide of Mittal who is spearheading the insurance initiative. So, Mittal, Gupta, and just about anyone else in the senior leadership team at Bharti see the group's core competence as the ability to manage annuity-driven services businesses, manoeuvre through regulatory minefields, and handle a large number of consumers and the consequent marketing challenges (Bharti Tele-Ventures, for instance, has a presence in 5,200 towns and cities across India).

Anything To Do With Numbers

Akhil Gupta Jt Managing Director, Bharti Tele-Ventures Some people consider Akhil Gupta the country's best chief financial officer. It is his ability to raise money at the right cost at the right time, they say, that has helped Bharti Tele-Ventures grow into the country's largest and most efficient mobile telephony company. Gupta, whom Sunil Mittal credits with the original idea behind outsourcing everything from network management to IT to customer support, is involved in each of Bharti Enterprises' new ventures, and is driving the insurance joint venture. "I am just learning about the business," he says with trademark modesty. "He has a couple of very exciting ideas on how things can be done differently in insurance," counters Mittal.

Then, there's the thing about telecommunications no longer posing the kind of challenges that excite Mittal. Each of the new businesses, he admits, does that, and all three, he claims, have the potential, over time, to grow to be as big as Bharti Tele-Ventures (It will have 25 million subscribers by 2008, if not 2007, which will make it among the 10 largest mobile telephony companies in the world), besides meeting the original objective of diversification: make more money for Bharti Enterprises than an incremental investment in the telecom business or in the market would have. "There is nothing unusual about venturing into other businesses," says Kishore Chaukar, Managing Director, Tata Industries. "A good entrepreneur is one who seizes a business opportunity and it doesn't matter if it is insurance or telecom or steel."

A Green Thumb

If you are from Punjab, it is inconceivable that you do not know something about agriculture. Mittal comes from Ludhiana, an industrial town in the state and that may well be one reason for his passion for agriculture. "The guiding thing for us to get into any business is that we should be able to make a big difference," says Rakesh Bharti Mittal, the eldest of the three Mittal brothers who own Bharti Enterprises, the company's Vice Chairman, and the driving force behind FieldFresh Foods Private Limited (the Mittals are a unique business family in that they do not seem to believe in primogeniture as far as management responsibilities are concerned). "Agriculture has the potential to change the face of the country." FieldFresh has some 850 acres under cultivation, will focus exclusively on fruits and vegetables (it has exported some consignments; been forced, by logistical constraints to release most of its produce locally; but as Sunil Mittal cheerfully says, it's al