Bharti enters mobile phone biz; eyes top 5 rank in 3 years

Bharti is India's number one mobile service provider with over 140 million subscribers and the company recently acquired Zain Telecom in Africa to expand its footprint in 16 countries.

Making an announcement, Beetel Teletech Limited (a Bharti Group firm) Executive Director and CEO Vinod Sawhny said, "The market is huge and there is a room for Indian players... Phones in the price range of Rs 2,000-6,000 are witnessing 30 per cent growth and we plan to offer a good combination of feature-rich phones at affordable prices."

India is one of the fastest growing markets with annual shipments of about 130 million mobile devices, he said, adding, "It was important for a group company Beetel to enter the market with a product for masses that is different from others."

Asked whether Beetel would bundle its handsets with Airtel services, Sawhny said, "We shall be talking to all the GSM players for bundling our handsets and it will not be restricted to only the group's flagship company."

On the market, which has a mix of leading global players like Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola and home-grown companies like Micromax, Karbonn and others, he said the company was a long-term player and has set an ambitious target of being among the top five players in the next three years.

To begin with, Beetel would have an in-house design facility in India and operating on a business model under which manufacturing is being done India outside, but with innovation done locally.

The entire range of Beetel phones has features like dual SIMs, FM and cameras, thus ensuring the range is contemporary. The individual models have many firsts highlighting Beetel's focus on innovative technology.

Some of these include the first gaming QWERTY phone, a triple SIM offering GSM+GSM+CDMA, the first phone to house a complete movie and a 3G phone with an exceedingly well designed and easy user interface, he said.

Additionally, Beetel will offer a bouquet of VAS features to appeal the youth, ranging from popular social networking applications (Facebook and Nimbuzz) to partnering with Mobile commerce partner (NgPay), mobile portal (Yahoo), Internet browser (Opera Mini), added with offers of free call and free SMSes powered by Ibibo.

This exclusive tie-up will give Beetel customers an opportunity to make free calls and short messaging services (SMS) through GPRS technology enabled on the phones.

The company plans to establish its presence across India by the end of the current fiscal.
In the first phase of the launch, Beetel mobile phones will be available through a nationwide distribution network of over 4,000 outlets across Delhi, Haryana, UP and Uttaranchal, Rajasthan, Punjab and the seven northeastern states.

In addition, Beetel phones will be supported by an extensive service network of 400 service centres, backed by an SMS facility for locating the service centres across six states.

Asked whether the company plans to manufacture mobile phones at its existing facilities, Sawhny said, "We are open to this," but did not elaborate on plans. Currently, it will outsource manufacturing operations.

He said China is one option, but the company was looking at other destinations from where it can source the handsets.