Bharti Airtel Limited Bharti, headquartered in Delhi, India, is a family-owned telecommunications company, founded by Sunil Mittal in 1995. Mittal saw an opportunity for his business because The Indian telecom market allows companies to bid for a government license to operate the first private mobile telecom service in Delhi. Bharti won the tender and became the first private supplier in Delhi. In 1998 they were the first to profit from their services in India. As Bharti continued to grow, they began obtaining licenses for mobile telecom operations in 15 out of 23 geographic regions also called circles. Bharti expected to achieve full coverage in India by 2005.” (Applegate, Austin and Soule) When Bharti went public in 2002 with the Indian National Stock Exchange, it raised $172 million and by the end of 2002 had raised over $1 billion dollars through direct investments. Bharti had to face many competitors in 2002 and 2003. The total revenue of Indian telecom was “8.5 billion and growing rapidly at 17% annually”. (Applegate, Austin, and Soule) To be a major competitor in this market, a company would have to lower unit costs while increasing share through acquisitions and bankruptcies of other companies. Bharti had several major competitors which were: BSNL, MTNL, Hutch-Essar, Tata, Idea Cellular and Reliance. For Bharti to be competitive in this market, it would have to provide valuable services. Services like games, ringtones, and text messaging, just to name a few. These services had to be efficient and reliable. They would need the best technologies at their disposal. With constant growth, Bharti needs a way to be competitive in the growing industry. Akhil Gupta, former CFO and current CEO, acknowledged that the company was unable to manage its growth and maintain high customer service, as well as having to manage its ever-changing IT and network services. His proposed idea to manage the challenges Bharti was facing in its IT and network services was to outsource those areas where Bharti was not fully competent. Could outsourcing be the way of the future for Bharti? Success Factors for Growth in the Indian Telecom Industry Market In India's highly competitive market, Bharti needs to be aware of how to maintain its core competencies and seek to develop new ones.