Bharti Airtel (Bharti), which was established in India in 1995, completely altered how the world’s telecommunications sector operated. The cellular operator had chosen to focus on India’s mass market, especially the rural poor, in defiance of conventional Western telecom knowledge that prioritized high pricing for wealthier clients. The brave move to outsource a significant chunk of its operations had been made by the corporation in order to concentrate on gaining consumers. With 183 million customers by February 2012, Bharti had long been the market leader in India and had invented a high-volume, low-cost telecom business with rates that were previously thought to be unprofitable (Palepy & Bijlani, 2012).
When Bharti’s leaders arrived in Africa, they found that Zain’s employee morale was low, the work cultures on the two continents were significantly different, and market share sales and EBITDA were steadily declining. Poor infrastructure, outdated technology, and software, restricted access to equipment and supplies, a lack of qualified personnel, and a higher-than-expected cost of doing business were all factors that contributed to the situation (Palepy & Bijlani, 2012). Despite the difficulties, Bharti started a number of transformations in Africa, including outsourcing active and passive managed services for each of its 16 countries and outsourcing its IT support and call center operations for the first time in Africa to BPO companies (Palepy & Bijlani, 2012). Also, the management focused on redesigning its distribution network, integrating its brand, and putting in place a number of initiatives relating to human resources to instill the company’s DNA in its new operations. The executives of Bharti believed that these actions had fundamentally altered the structure of the African telecom sector. Bharti ran the risk of incurring losses if it carried out its India plan in Africa, which included lowering prices and investing in rural networks if demand remained weak.
Reference
Palepy, K. & Bijlani, T. (2012). Bharti Airtel in Africa. Harvard Business School.