'The question was when, not if': Sunil Mittal recalls 3 'Mahabharatas' that nearly sank Bharti Airtel

Bharti Enterprises founder Sunil Bharti Mittal on Thursday described 2002, 2009 and 2016 as 'Bharti’s Mahabharatas', recalling three distressful periods when the telecom operator faced a near-death situation and a threat of collapse of the business.

“I have gone through three near-death experiences in my business,” Mittal said during a conversation at the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women event in New Delhi.

“Things have not been easy, things have been rather difficult. 2002, 2009 and 2016 have been nothing short of what I describe generally as Bharti’s Mahabharatas,” he added.

Mittal said the business came so close to the brink of collapse during those periods that the question was not whether it would collapse, but when. “On each one of those occasions, the question was not if. The question was: when did we collapse?” he said.

For Mittal, those were the moments when resilience and leadership mattered most. “That’s the time when you need to put in all that you have and lead from the front,” he said, adding that keeping teams inspired was critical during a crisis.

Mittal credited Bharti’s workforce with helping the company navigate some of its toughest periods, arguing that its strength did not simply come from its balance sheet or access to technology.

“In our case, our robustness was not a balance sheet. It was not the technology because it’s the same technology for everyone. It’s about people,” he said.

Recalling the disruption that swept through the Indian telecom industry from 2016 to 2018, Mittal said he saw Airtel employees fighting on the ground to retain customers even as competitors offered free services.

“When 10 companies folded up in 2016 to 2018, Airtel actually grew,” Mittal said. “To my mind, if you have to really pick up one real reason for our success, it is the inspired workforce and the people that we have.”

From forging bicycle crankshafts to telecom

Mittal also used the conversation to retrace an entrepreneurial journey that began a long way from mobile telecommunications. He described himself as a 'very poor student' and recalled graduating with great difficulty with a basic degree in economics and political science.

Growing up in Ludhiana, which Mittal described as the 'Manchester of India', meant being surrounded by entrepreneurs, many of whom were involved in manufacturing bicycles or their components.

Mittal did not have enough capital to manufacture a complete bicycle, so he started smaller. “Not having the capital to make a full bicycle, I had to choose something very small,” he said.

That product was the bicycle crankshaft, which Mittal recalled forging in hot metal in a sweaty, hot workshop to supply larger bicycle manufacturers. “That’s really how my small little journey in entrepreneurship started,” he said.

But Mittal said he recognised relatively early that continuing to make bicycle components, or even graduating to complete bicycles, was unlikely to deliver the scale of success he wanted.

“If I would have continued on the path of either bicycle parts or making the full bicycle, one would have never got the enormous success that one wanted,” Mittal said. “You had to pivot, you had to move out and find new areas."