Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as airtel, is an Indian telecommunications company that operates in 19 countries across South Asia,

Africa and the Channel Islands. It operates a GSM network in all countries, providing 2G or 3G services depending upon the country of operation. Airtel is the fifth largest telecom operator in the world with over 207.8 million subscribers across 19 countries at the end of 2010. It is the largest cellular service provider in India, with over 152.5 million subscribers at the end of 2010. Airtel is the 3rd largest in-country mobile operator by subscriber base, behind China Mobile and China Unicom. It is also the leading telecom company in the African nations of Burkina Faso, Chad, Malawi, Niger, Gabon, Congo, Seychelles and Tanzania. It also operates in the islands of Jersey and Guernsey in the English Channel through an agreement with Vodafone. It is the second largest operator in Kenya, Uganda and Madagascar. Now we will first talk about the planning strategies undertaken by Airtel. It has a vision of becoming the most loved brand, enriching the lives of millions by 2015. "Enriching lives means putting the customer at the heart of everything we do. We will meet their needs based on our deep understanding of their ambitions, wherever they are. By having this focus we will enrich our own lives and those of our other key stakeholders. Only then will we be thought of as exciting, innovation, on their side and a truly world class company." The mission of airtel is to meet the mobile communication needs of its customers through Errorfree service delivery. It will also offer innovative products and services, cost efficiency and unified messaging solutions. The company follows a mantra of focusing on their core competencies and outsourcing the rest. It is known for being the first mobile phone company in the world to outsource everything except marketing and sales and finance. The company won the 3G spectrum auction for spectrum in 13 regions. In these 13 regions, its network i.e. base stations, microwave links, etc. are maintained by Ericsson India which has 7 regions, the Nokia Siemens Network and Huawei both of which have been given 3 regions each. These vendors will plan, design, deploy and maintain 3G-HSPA (third generation, high speed packet access) networks in these 13 telecom circles. So that was about the planning, we will now discuss the organizational structure of airtel. As we can see there is a hierarchy, which implies a flow of command. Sunil Bharti Mittal is the chairman and managing director of Bharti Airtel. There are 2 CEOs under him, Sanjay Kapoor, who is in charge of India and South Asia, and Manoj Kohli, who is in charge of International business groups, apart from being a joint MD. And finally there are 11 directors who comprise the remaining board. Sunil Bharti Mittal is the founder, chairman and group CEO of Bharti Enterprises, one of Indias leading business groups with interests in telecom, financial services, retail, realty, manufacturing and agriculture. He started his career at 18 after graduating from Punjab University in India in 1976 and founded Bharti. Sunil has been recognized with the Padma Bhushan, the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration, Academics and Management for 2009. Sunil

has been awarded numerous awards and recognitions including the Global Economy Prize 2009 by The Kiel Institute, Germany. The company is structured into four strategic business units Mobile, Telemedia, Enterprise and Digital TV. Airtel has nationwide presence and is the market leader with a market share of almost completely. It is 6th most valued brand according to an annual survey conducted by Brand Finance and The Economic Times in 2010. On 19 October 2004, Airtel announced the launch of a BlackBerry Wireless Solution in India. The launch is a result of a tie-up between Bharti Tele-Ventures Limited and RIM. The Apple iPhone 3G was rolled out in India on 22 August 2008 by Airtel & Vodafone. Both the cellular service providers rolled out their Apple iPhone 3GS in the first quarter of 2010. However, high prices and contract bonds discouraged consumers and it was not as successful for both the service providers as much as the iPhone is successful in other markets of the world. On 11th April 2011: Bharti Airtel declared that it will launch iPhone 4 in India in the coming months. Airtel's product offerings in the segment of Telemedia include fixed-line telephones providing local, national and international long distance voice connectivity, broadband internet access through DSL and IPTV services. They provide various services in 87 cities. They have 3.3 million customers of which 43.1% were subscribing to broadband services, as on December 31, 2010. The strategy of Airtel's Telemedia Services business unit is to focus on cities with high revenue potential Enterprise Services is provides communications services to large Enterprise and Carrier customers. Airtel delivers end to end telecom solutions to Indias large corporate by serving as the single point of contact for all telecommunication needs by providing a full suite of communication services across data, voice, network integration, and managed services. The Digital TV business provides Direct-to-Home (DTH) TV services across India under the brand name Airtel Digital TV. It started services on 9 October 2008. Airtel Digital TV also offers Airtel Digital TV recorder and High Definition (HD) set top boxes. Airtel digital TV had over 4.9 million customers at the end 2010. Now we look at the innovative strategies taken by airtel to establish its supremacy over its competitors. The first product it sold was a push button telephone, which was introduced in India for the first time. Then it moved on to become the first fax machine producers in India, using their fastmover advantage. It unveiled a new card especially for pilgrims performing the Haj in 2004. airtel introduced BlackBerry Connect in India in 2005. It was the first telecom firm to step into television distribution business. Airtel was the first company to launch the Caller Tunes service. It tied up with Apple Inc. to bring the popular iPhone to India. A. R. Rahman was roped in to compose the tune, which is the most downloaded ringtone in India. It entered into an agreement with the S.S.C. board of Andhra Pradesh to send results of students via SMS to its customers. It unveiled the India One long distance prepaid calling cards. It took over Kuwaiti company Zain in the second largest takeover deal by an Indian firm to gain operations in 13 African nations. It has outsourced much of its work to other companies.