Fifty eight year-old telecom tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittal - an entrepreneur, philanthropist, founder and Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Bharti Enterprises - is now least bothered about the succession of the giant business empire, which has been running with well-structured corporate environment for years in the country as well as abroad.
As far as the next generation family members coming into Bharti business is concerned, Mittal is of the opinion that they have been given a free hand to do the things of their own and in this professional set up, succession takes a much lower priority.
“With a corporate structure in place at Bharti, succession, in terms of family coming into business takes a much lower priority given that highly-professional team and professional environment operates in Bharti,” Mittal said on Thursday.
Mittal, born in Punjabi Aggarwal family, who started his first business in April 1976 at the age of 18 with a capital investment of only Rs 20,000 or $300 borrowed from his father, was on Thursday non-committal on his children succeeding him, saying that the Bharti Group has a high-calibre professionals, running day-to-day operations and the next generation of Mittals is ‘doing their own thing’.
“Bharti Enterprises, one of the most professional set ups in Indian business sense, is very well structured. We have high-calibre CEOs, teams running all our companies and as the Chairman, (brothers) Rakesh as Vice Chairman and Rajan, we are governing our enterprises through our supervision at board level,” he said.
In fact, Mittal who is ranked 13th richest person by the Forbes with a networth of $6.2 billions, has three children - twins Shravin and Kavin and daughter Eiesha. He has kept himself away from Bharti’s day-to-day commercial operations, having passed the reins to professional CEOs. The group’s flagship Bharti Airtel is world’s third lagest telecom operator.
When asked about the status of the company after his retirement, he said in lighter vein, not now, but the next generation of Mittals is doing their own thing. “My son Kavin is building career through ‘Hike’, my daughter is in london. And the other son is also building career with private equity firm,” he added.
While Kavin Bharti Mittal is the Founder & CEO at Hike Messenger- the homegrown messaging app that competes with the likes of Whatsapp, Shravin, 28, had briefly joined the Bharti Group’s international operations as manager in 2010. Holder of a degree in accounting and finance from the University of Bath in the UK, Shravin joined the Group from JP Morgan Cazenove in london where he was an analyst in the technology, media and telecommunications division of the investment banking unit.
He had earlier worked with Merrill lynch in New York and Ernst & Young in london. After a brief stint, he returned to a PE firm.
“Rakesh’s son is working on own food business. They are all working on their careers and destiny. let’s see how far and where they want to go. If they ever want to come in business, they will have to raise their hand and we will see where they fit in,” he said adding that children will find their own destiny. They are pursuing their own career and businesses.
Reminding his past contribution in politics, asked if he still considers joining politics, he said, ‘No’. But yes, you are right once upon a time there was a thought in my mind but that was long years back, but that is not my aspiration at this point of time,” he said.