“I believe you can never lose if you are fair to your foreign partner”

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: Shekhar Gupta : I always say that people like Sunil Mittal are very valuable and important. Sunil represents more than anybody else in this country, the success of economic reform because he’s built the first great post reform business, he’s the first great post reform tycoon and not just that, he has built the first genuine post-reform brand, Airtel. At a time when we were told that when reforms happened whatever remains of Indian brands will also die out and now we will only be buying foreign goods, foreign brands. I particularly cherish something that Sunil said at P Chidambaram’s book release, how some of that impulse against reform came from the entrenched Indian corporate sector; it was an immortal line Sunil said; ‘Had the Bombay Club succeeded in its endeavour there would have been no Ludhiana Club.’ Sunil represents that Ludhiana Club. He comes from Ludhiana. There are many others. They all represent first generation entrepreneurs armed with ambition, dreams, ideas and who then rode the crest of economic reform. For all those reasons he represents modern India, not just corporate India.

Sunil Bharti Mittal : Thank You, Shekhar. This has been a delight dream run. Very few companies in India have had the kind of success that we have engineered at Bharti, a company which has seen a huge deal of adversities....

Rajeev Dubey:Is this the beginning of your entry into politics?

To be honest with you, if you asked me this question five years back the answer would have been yes; I’d be in politics in some form by the age of 50. But I seem to have lost my plot . I’m not sure anymore. I’ve evaluated the impact that people who have come into politics from a business background are able to make, or lack of impact actually. I think I could serve the society and nation better by building enterprises, agricultural projects, something we are putting our money, efforts and resources in. I believe all that can have a bigger impact in society than being in politics. It is unlikely that I will cross the line of being in active politics.

Vrishti Beniwal: Bharti Airtel recently announced $8 billion investment by 2010. In what major segments are you investing? What else are you doing to ward off competition from Vodaphone?