Indian Cell Phone Magnate Strikes Deal With Wal-Mart for Distribution System
Tuesday, 02 October 2007
As cell phones proliferate throughout rural India, one of the pioneers of the technology is looking to move other markets – bigtime. Sunil Bharti Mittal, the guru who built Bharti Airtel basically from scratch into a more than $40 billion nationwide telecom company, made a huge announcement this past August.
The 49-year-old chairman of Bharti Enterprises, now one of India's biggest conglomerates -- known for his large-scale daydreams that he manages to turn into reality -- plans to, in partnership with Wal-Mart, set up India’s “first modern wholesale distribution system, bringing goods from farm and factory to retailers,” as recently reported in the International Herald Tribune.
If he succeeds, Mittal will have built a critical link in India's dysfunctional infrastructure, IHT says, in which an estimated 25 percent of the produce grown by Indian farmers currently rots before it can be sold.
"The cold chain, the trucking, the storage, will all ensure that the whole nation gains," Mittal said recently in an interview. India "can become a food supplier to the rest of the world." (Large-scale daydreams, indeed.)
Well, the world is taking note. In late September, Mittal led a business delegation to the United States to celebrate 60 years of Indian independence, while selling India as a destination for foreign businesses and capital, IHT reports.
American business will be listening: For the year ended March 31, Bharti Airtel's profits were 42.6 billion rupees, or $1.1 billion.