Bharti Airtels Impossible Survival Story Intermission E03

TITLE: Bharti Airtel’s impossible survival story | Intermission E03 - Bharti Airtel | The Ken CHANNEL: The Ken DATE: 2026-06-29 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Let me take you back to January 2013. A brutal tariff war has been running for years now and Airel’s profits have been collapsing, have been falling year after year. They’ve been falling for 12 straight quarters. Its average revenue per subscriber, the amount of money that it makes each month from a subscriber Harpu has fallen from 220 rupees to 185 rupees. Its quarterly profit has fallen from 2,200 crores to just 285 crores, a drop of 87%. and it’s saddled with debt and interest and forex outflow because it made a very expensive $10.7 billion acquisition in Africa which is Zen. Seeking to turn things around, Sunil Mittal decides to bring in a new CEO. That CEO is Gopal Vittal. He’s a former Hindustan uni liver executive. Now, interestingly, Gopal had joined AEL before. He joined it in 2006 as its head of marketing. He worked there till 2008 when he went back to Hindustan Union Liver. Sunil brings him back and he also announces that Adel’s existing CEO Sanjay Kapoor will be resigning and this leads to an internal crisis. By the end of that year, eight out of the 13 members of AEL’s management board its top level leaders have resigned. In another quarter, five more senior leaders have resigned and that includes Manoj Kohli who CEO of its international business which includes Africa as well. What started out as a crisis has snowballed into a full-blown meltdown. And yet neither Sunil Mal nor Gopal flinch. They say it’s always darkest right before dawn. And dawn had happened just a quarter ago where Gopal Battle led Airel to its first rise in quarterly profits after 15 straight quarters of decline. Etle declared about 610 crores in profit in that quarter. Today for its most recent quarter its profit was 7,325 crores. But this turnaround is just one small arc in a company’s 30-year history. I mean, this is a company that’s been hammered by India’s regulators, by every wave of telecom technology you can think of and by reliance twice and come back stronger each time. This is the story of three men. It’s the boy from Ludana, the chartered accountant who would go on to become the fourth Mittal brother and the soap salesman from Hindustan Lever Limited.

The best oneline bio of Gopal Whitt that I’ve heard so far. Welcome to episode 3 of Intermission. I’m Rohendmakumar, your co-host and also the co-founder and CEO of the ken. And I’m Sitha Raman Ganes, the Ken’s deputy editor and your co-host. Intermission is a podcast about the making of India’s greatest companies and where they go next. What do I mean by the making of the greatest companies? Well, how they came to be, the people that shaped them, the places where they came from, the culture that makes them, how they survived, the wars they fought, how they won, and most importantly, how they’re poised. And we’re sure that by telling these incredible stories, you’ll be able to figure out what happens with these companies as they face newer rivals, newer markets, and well, a changing India. Now before AEL before Bharti before Sunil Mittal there’s Ludjana a small industrial city in Punjab. It’s founded in 1480 by the Ludi dynasty as a military outpost on the Delhi to Lahor road. It sits on the Grand Trunk Road. It’s at the junction of several rail lines which is what makes it a natural agriculture market over time. The interesting thing is Grand Trunk Road. Now when I was researching this, do you know that the history of what we know as the Grand Trunk Road traces back to 3rd century BC the first version of is built by the Morian Empire which was flourishing back then. It’s a road that connects Patutra Pataliputra which is Patna to Kurasan which is an Afghanistan. It’s the road that’s used by almost every traveler who had to cross the Kyber pass and enter into what’s called the Hind. Now this road is taken by invaders like Gori and Gazni. This road reaches all the way deep into Bangladesh. Today this road connects four countries and the four capitals of those countries which is Kabul, Islamabad, New Delhi and Dhaka. Oh, I didn’t know that. And this road covers 2500 kilometers. Now I’ve lived in Delhi. I’ve traveled on this road. It was called all of us knew it as GT road. Of course we were kids. No one really thought about was GT road like it’s like MG road SV road. Okay. Or MG road in every right. So it’s like GT road. But now when I actually researched this um in the context of I realized wow I mean this is an incredible road. The British come in to India and over the years they upgrade this road and make it into a motorable road and it becomes a grand trunk road which is GT road. Now um as part of this upgrade in 1870 uh the Delhi to Lahore railway line turns Ludhana into the main trading center in Punjab. So Ludhana’s rise is because it’s poised on this very important road which is important to trade and that lays the groundwork for everything that follows later with Ludana. After the British come in, there is a modern industrial pivot that happens in Ludjana. The British introduce mechanical knitting machines in the late 19th century which spurs the first ag um the shift from agricultural to mechanical. So right after the industrial revolution. That’s right. Right. and it it essentially sparks a a small scale uh textile and hosieri ecosystem. What happens next is both sad and interesting because the partition leads to an influx of Hindu and sick refugees that are fleeing uh you know uh West Punjab which now goes into Pakistan like places like Seialot, Lalpur and Lahore but it is also an accelerator you can actually call it the sort of refugee spirit vibe. Yeah. I mean actually u you know when you mentioned Ludjana and partition which is obviously one of those unforgettable uh tragedies right uh not just for India but for mankind in general uh I I realized Sadat Hassan Monto one of the greatest chroniclers of partition and its after effects was actually born in Ludjana so this wave of course it’s a two-way displacement there is a displacement of people who lived in uh Ludjana who moved to Pakistan an uh largely Muslims, artisans etc. and there is a reverse displacement of refugees that come into Punjab and into Ludjana. Now this wave essentially brings with it families and people who must build up from nothing. Yeah. Right. Because they’ve lost everything that they had. Right. It’s intense and gritty resilience. The atmosphere shifts into this hyperaggressive, desperate hustle for survival. It transforms what were earlier calm residential alleyways into small impromptu home factories. And and the vibe is very aggressively self-made. Everyone for themselves. The dominant business class are all first generation industries who have arrived as refugees. You could have had a thriving business uh in Pakistan but you now have nothing. Yes. They come in typically as families with one trunk with whatever belongings they can find and they have to rebuild everything from scratch. And that reflects in the city’s culture as it evolves. Long working hours, joint family firms, an intense appetite for risk and low social pretention because everything is wiped out. Everyone is on the same clean slate. By the 1960s and 70s, Ludana has rapidly diversified away from the textiles that British had introduced them into into precision light engineering. It becomes India’s hub for bicycles, sewing machines, auto components and diesel engines. It’s called the Manchester of India with reflecting the industrialization that happened in Manchester. Punjab Agricultural University is founded in 1962 that anchors Ludhana as the technical brain behind India’s green revolution because it leads to tractors, threshers, tube well pumps, diesel engines which sort of becomes the fourth industrial pillar. Now the commercial landscape at this point is dominated largely by Hindu and Sikh Katri. Now the katri family some of them you may know which is they founded hero cycles, Atlas cycles, aan cycles, Auroras and Agarwals who are Bunnyas they possessed generations of mercantile experience I mean some of a lot of it brought back from Pakistan right and experience in banking distribution and trade. Now any cycle part any hosieri yarn or machine dye could be sourced typically within 5 kilometers because they have their family networks or networks of those family networks. So the supply chain is all within the city. Yes. Yeah. It’s intense. It’s self-made. It’s chaotic and it’s fiercely independent. This was a town that was defined by the Jugar philosophy. Mastering the art of replicating and improving imported western machinery with minimal resources.

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