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"Success is in our DNA" - An exclusive interview with Mr. Manoj Kohli, Bharti Airtel Limited, President [22.05.07]

Andrey Gidaspov: Mr. Kohli, in today’s business, no company can win without a great team.  Please share with our readers just how Airtel built its winning team? Why do people come to you?

Manoj Kohli:  I should tell you that Airtel is about people and not about money.  We started our business in 1995 and at that time we had neither an established brand, nor technology.  What we had however, was our entrepreneurial spirit.  And with that very special “DNA” we continue our journey in the years to come.

From the Bharti Company’s perspective, we are large, but in the global mobile perspective we are still small.   And we’d like to maintain the spirit of a small company and we want to work just like a small company, where there are no formalities, no bureaucracy, no harassing, and our people are enabled with speed, decisions are taken with speed, and our employees have the courage to make mistakes.  

People are actually encouraged to act.  We always bat on the front. In cricket terms, (and you know how big is cricket for Indians), I can say that we are always on the front foot.  You know, in cricket like in any other sport, you can attack and you can defend, but we have chosen the attack mode and sustain it.

I think that it is very important for the company because we are the leaders. And we are leaders who came from behind.  We were the smallest company, and then slowly we became bigger.  Then we launched into the journey of passion, journey of higher motivation of our people.

Our people in a way own the company.  You can do anything with this company, because people say that this is in fact “their company”.  They own the company. They built this large scale company to which they have a personal attachment and commitment. That is the edge that we have. 

Today competitors may copy virtually anyone’s move.  The only thing that you can not copy is our spirit.  You can not fake our passion.  That’s why we win.

And we are also very straight people, we can say good things as well as bad.  For example, people who work with me can come up to me and say anything they want.  Everyday I receive both good news and bad news, you know, but it should be honest. We should share good news and bad news and it should be totally spontaneous.

AG: What about the Airtel idea itself? How did it come to life? Who is behind this company?

MK: Sunil Mittal is the founder.  He is an entrepreneur with the finest business acumen, and he has instilled that entrepreneurial spirit in us.  And this DNA has been taken forward by people, by their passion.  Sunil gave it all, especially the spirit to people. We want everyone to keep that spirit as pure as possible. That’s our secret!

AG: What is your current motto? What is that line that is instilled in your company?

MK: I think that it is in our DNA, in our culture to go ahead and do whatever we can, what’s in our power to win.  We will support ideas.  We’ll keep your excellence.  We are bringing our entrepreneurial activities, supported by the finest technology. We are delivering abilities of our people, giving them power, empowering them with the best support and helping them when they make mistakes. I make mistakes, you make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes.  The issue is that we learn from our mistakes, and have the tendency not to repeat those mistakes.  

AG: I read Sunil Mittal’s interview for Fortune magazine where he explains how the outsourcing phenomenon helped the company to grow.  So I asked a few operators what they think about that idea, and many of them said that this seems crazy.  Could you please comment on the famous Bharti outsourcing?

MK: I feel that we have the DNA to encourage and experiment with something new.  And we have the courage to be innovative, we are bold enough to experiment and walk new territories.  And you are right, many telcos still think that the network and IT are so very important for any operator. Of course they are. But essentially all we did was that we asked ourselves what our core competency is. The network? Equipment? No, these were not our core competence.  If something breaks, we would call the vendor side to fix it. 

So we decided that we shall do something that we can do the best.  Our core competency actually is strategic management.  We build our own strategy and we don’t use consultants.

AG: No McKinsey?

MK: No McKinsey or anyone else! Our second competence lies in our people, building morale, and encouraging talents.  Market is the third thing that we know best.  The 4^th is our competence in financial management, from time to time we need to raise funding and for this we need to have the best expertise.  The 5^th is working with regulation and regulators.  As you know, in India there are new policies evolving in the sector, so we need to be on top of the situation. 

These are five sides that we are good at, and we don’t believe that we are the best in IT.  Nokia, Ericsson and others can do it much better.

We are doing training development, improving employee skill sets, and stuff like that. We are beefing up that knowledge in our company.

AG: Last year broadband has been the best growth sector in Russia.  So how is your broadband doing?

MK: You are right, broadband is becoming increasingly important for every operator.  Let me start with the realities though.  First of all, mobile is currently what makes our country connected.  Secondly broadband evolution is the future, and in India we already have broadband Internet but this is a rather small market. 

We believe that in the next two to three years this revolution will take off, and we are ready for that.  We want to participate in every new advancement, be it IPTV or DTH.  We are saying to our customers that we want to provide them with a comprehensive solution -- on a small screen of a mobile phone, on a mid screen of a PC and big screen of TV.

We have products in all these directions i.e. content, audio and video content, Bollywood stuff, music and cricket, sport and gaming, so we are encircled by any possible content offering. In the home segment, it is voice and fixed lines, data and broadband and now media.

But evolution in India is going this way: voice, data, broadband.

We have millions of new partners.  We have fiber to home, then copper to residences. And each apartment should have three sockets, Airtel sockets, for PC, fixed line and TV.

AG: Most of your broadband is in ADSL?

MK: Yes, but wireless is there too.  For example, we have WiMax for our enterprise solution. For retail we are using WiFi.

AG: Talking about WiMax, what do you think of this technology potential in India?

MK: It’s a big argument – 3G vs. WiMax, HSDPA vs. Wimax… We, in Airtel, have large scale solutions, we want to apply the technology throughout the world and experimenting with any technology is not really for us.  You see, with the scale that we are moving each and every month, does not allow us to experiment with technologies.  We are clear on what WCDMA can do and that it is the right way to go.  As you know, the Indian government will soon announce about the 3G technology, and we are ready for it.  So regarding WiMax we are keeping an eye on it.  Fixed WiMax, I mean. Mobile WiMax is not yet finalized, so I am not talking about it.

AG: You just mentioned about 3G license deployment in India.  Would you please elaborate as to how Bharti Airtel is preparing for this technology?

MK: We support WCDMA standard. And we would like to follow that standard.  I would say that 3G is mere spectrum, which will help us to grow, but today the data revenue in India is just about 10%.  We still have well run 2G and 2.5G networks, and we have EDGE.  So the smooth transition from 2.5G to 3G will be our priority.

In addition, our customer has no interest in what‘s behind that terminology, you know.  All the client wants to know is – what is my speed? They are interested in speed and price and what content is provided.   But what technology lies behind it is not of interest. In the end of the day, what content you have is so important, what brand you have is so important, and we focus on these issues.

AG: What is Airtel doing on the mobile content side? What is your business model?

MK: We are building a new platform which will allow a lot of Content Partners to interact smoothly with us.  And this has great potential, and everyone can add their own content much faster. All our content partners can bring their stuff, and we are looking forward to launching the platform.

Like other operators, we are working on a revenue share basis.

AG: Continuing with the VAS segment topic, what is your share in the overall VAS market in India?

MK: We don’t know the exact market share.  What we know is that we are launching services regularly, but still do not have the level we want.  There is still a way to go. I should tell you that SMS is far bigger than anything else in India. 

We want to push the simplicity principle.  And we call it “VAS for mass”.  In fact, it is voice VAS that is hot in India.  What we want to get it in mobile is the simplicity of two clicks.  For example, if our customers want to get tickets, songs or anything, we are trying to simplify this process, simplify our customer experience, and bring more profits.  So voice VAS is so important.  In India ring tones and ring back tones, in fact music on the whole is so very popular, and we are trying to promote that simplicity across board.  The simpler we are, the more users we will attract.

We are also encouraging vernacular languages. In India there are so many different languages, and we want to enable our customers to understand what we are saying and what we are offering them.

AG: Could you share your differentiators in the VAS segment? What makes you different?

MK: Yes, correct.  To start with, we are always the first to offer the latest to our valued customers.  Our brand today is a symbol of innovation.  We have just launched our “Who wants to be a millionaire” series with Shahrukh Khan, the famous Bollywood star, who is anchoring the show, which is a total hit. After an immediate launch, millions of our customers sent SMS to take part. 

Another one of our super hit programs, “Indian Idol” also had a huge following.  So, what I am saying is that we want to promote more interactivity with our customers, we want to lead with more innovation. We are always one step ahead of the competition.  Our competitors follow us, and we think that we need to keep going further, even before our customers or competitors think of it.

We think that we interact with lots of content partners and that’s what enables us to be ahead, we have so many media partners, and that gives us an edge.

AG: Yes, I know about the Indian obsession with the music and Bollywood! Yet this content must be prevalent for urban users, could you tell me how the situation is with VAS in rural areas?

MK: 70% of content sales are accounted for by rural areas, and it is the community that empowers us to go further with the ideas and we keep launching new services.  Plus lots of people move to various parts of the country, and they want to buy the same content in various parts of India, while on the move.  So the purchasing power is also growing.  Nowadays people want to buy a house, then a car and then a mobile phone.  This trio is the must package for middle-class Indians.

In terms of mobility, in rural areas they are simply encouraged to go mobile, because they don’t have fixed lines.  You see, the whole transition in India was quite remarkable: from nothing to ubiquitous mobility.

We cover 4,000 towns of India.  There are 300,000 villages in India and we want to cover all of them.  Our focus is to reach 75% of Indian coverage, and we are trying to do it.

Let me give you just one example on how much infrastructure we are building every day.  We are installing some 54 towers a day, that is 2.3 towers every hour!  And for the next year it will grow even further, with the total amount surpassing 20,000 towers.

AG: Talking about towers, I’ve just learned that you are going to share 70,000 towers with Vodafone.  What can you comment about this agreement, what does it give to Bharti? How is your relationship with Vodafone after they pulled out some shares?

MK: Vodafone remains our strategic partner. And they have 5.6% in Bharti.  We decided that we shall cooperate on the passive infrastructure side, also long distance and international long distance telephony sectors.  This all will provide an economy of scale for us.

AG: Let’s move on to your Enterprise SBU level.  I understand that it is built on your undersea cable capabilities.  How is your overall carrier business developing?

MK: Today we have over 45,000 km of carrier line.  We have a cable to Singapore, we are also planning more international cable within an international consortium.  There is an existing SeaMeWe-4 cable.  And there are 2-3 other projects that we might participate in in the future.  What is encouraging is that traffic is increasing. And that’s the single main reason for the future growth.  And we are moving East and West, to the Middle East, and also to Singapore.  All these directions are of interest to us.

AG: Living in Asia, we all faced the consequences of the terrible earthquake that hit Taiwan last year and crushed over 90% of the cable infrastructure.  How was the situation on your side?

MK: We worked so hard on fixing it! Some of our teams worked for 36 hrs. We have large US companies as our customers and after what happened, our teams were fixing this problem so swiftly.

AG: There is great interest from leading Russian telecom groups in active participation in the Indian mobile business, however there has been no success so far.  How can this cooperation be promoted?

MK:  True, there are so many international businesses which are interested in India. I think that   it is not about money, but rather about new partnerships and expertise.  I really can’t say that we at Bharti need any more shareholders, for example.  So, in our business we don’t really need anything else, except for new technologies and expertise.

Regarding partnerships with the Russian side, we have just signed an agreement with Rostelecom on the carrier business.  This being said, we are open to various modes of cooperation.

AG: What about killer apps in India? What is the Bharti Airtel view on that?

MK: The killer application for rural India is voice.  8 million people still don’t have a dial tone.  Secondly, this will be content, which is clearly the king. The music is the biggest and most popular content, then sports comes second.  The third interesting direction is mobile money transfer.  Then mobile phone as a TV.

As far as video is concerned, this content will be provided, but realistically we need to satisfy the voice demand first and utmost on the existing network, as well as new spectrum.  Then, when we get more and more spectrum, we can fully explore TV ops.

Finally, one of the defining segments now is media convergence.  This is the key to the future.

AG: My standard question comes last – what is the secret to your success?

MK: Values are so important. The fundamental secret of success lies in values and character, the ability to focus and prioritize in life.  And in my life success is substantiated by work and family, and there is no time for the number three!

Prioritize, focus and keep your head down.  And you will always win and you see, the third part of that equation is very important, as being humble about your achievements helps so much.  Because success sometimes can lead you away from the ground, and this should never happen.

AG: Thank you very much for your interview!

March 2007, New Delhi