Bharti Enterprises, the telecom-to-retail conglomerate founded by Sunil Mittal in the early 1990s, seems to be taking what could be the first steps towards a succession plan. Mittal?s twin sons ? Shravin and Kavin ? have now joined the company and are learning the ropes of the business. After Shravin, who joined the company last year, Kavin has taken charge as head of strategy and new product development at Bharti SoftBank, a 50:50 joint venture with Japan?s SoftBank, announced on Thursday.
By inducting his sons into the business, Mittal joins the league of Indian entrepreneurs like Wipro?s Azim Premji, HCL?s Shiv Nadar and TVS Group?s Venu Srinivasan, all of whom have brought their wards into company management or group activities.
Call it Mittal?s farsightedness: The two sons are handling separate businesses. While Shravin is part of the international (African) operations of group flagship Bharti Airtel, Kavin is strategy head at Bharti SoftBank. The JV will tap social media, gaming and e-commerce in India?s telecom market.
Bharti SoftBank will contribute to the growth of India?s mobile internet ecosystem with emphasis on three key areas ? social media, gaming and e-commerce ? a statement from the company said. Japan?s SoftBank is an internet-focused company, with expertise in the value-added services segment.
Both of Mittal’s sons have studied abroad. While Shravin worked at JPMorgan Cazenove in London as an analyst before joining the family business, the Imperial College-educated engineer Kavin is a technology enthusiast and has been actively involved in the start-up community, founding one of his own. After completing his Master’s in electrical and electronics engineering and management from Imperial College, he interned at a few of the world?s top firms such as McLaren Racing, Google and Goldman Sachs.
At 20, he founded a mobile applications start-up named AppSpark with a team of six. AppSpark launched ?Movies Now? in partnership with movietickets.com, an iPhone/iPad application. The application’s user experience and design focus made Movies Now one of the popular movie-goer apps’ for the iPhone.
?With a fast growing economy, a large youth population and access to cheaper and faster data, there is a unique opportunity to build services ground up for mobiles, especially in a country where the first screen for most is a mobile device. We are delighted to partner with SoftBank, whose vast experience in this area will help us build and invest in services for India,? a company statement quoting Kavin Bharti Mittal said. Apart from the twin sons, Mittal has a daughter who is married.