Only one telecom player bothered Airtel, says Sunil Mittal| India News

Bharti Airtel has survived the cutthroat telecom industry in India by sticking to its playbook, Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said at HTLS 2025 in New Delhi on Saturday.

That said, “there has been only one telecom player that’s bothered Airtel” when it launched operations in 2016, Mittal said.

Still, Bharti Airtel was ready for the competition, for the company had tracked how the rival went about acquiring spectrum and laying the ground for the eventual launch.

“So, while the launch disappeared 6-7 companies and triggered consolidation, Airtel has stood its ground and grown,” Mittal said.

“The first 10 years were very hard…It was like a shock,” Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal says of Airtel’s Africa foray. “We went in with the same playbook — low cost, massive expansion, but it took 6-7 years to crack the market.”

It was a newspaper ad that triggered Sunil Mittal’s interest in telecom, which soon became an obsession. What started as Beetel fixed-line phones with operations in Mumbai and then the metro cities, is today India’s second largest telecom company.

After External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, the next guest on the HTLS 2025 stage is Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder and chairman of diversified conglomerate Bharti Enterprises Ltd. that controls India’s second largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel Ltd.

A first-generation entrepreneur, Mittal started his first business in April 1976 at the age of 18 with ₹20,000 borrowed from his father. Today, his net worth stands at $34.2 billion (about ₹3 lakh crore). He is in conversation with former NITI Aayog Chairman Amitabh Kant, who most recently served as India’s G20 Sherpa.

Sunil Bharti Mittal is the Founder and Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, one of India’s foremost first-generation corporations with interests in Telecom, Space Communications, Digital Solutions, Real Estate and Hospitality.

Bharti has joint ventures with several global partners like SingTel, the UK and French Governments, among others.

The flagship venture of Bharti Enterprises is Bharti Airtel. Mittal has led Bharti Airtel over the decades as it became one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies — operating across 17 countries and serving over half a billion customers.

He is a recipient of the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s highest civilian honours, awarded to individuals who have demonstrated distinguished services of high order. Mittal has also been conferred the title of Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE), making him the first Indian citizen to receive this recognition from HM King Charles III.

Like there are good terrorists and bad terrorists, there are good military leaders and not-so-good ones, S Jaishankar said on Saturday, speaking about Pakistan’s chief of defence forces Field Marshal Asim Munir and India-Pakistan.

S Jaishankar was speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit (HTLS) 2025 in New Delhi on Saturday.

When asked about pressure from Dhaka to extradite former prime minister Sheikh Hasina after she was convicted with a death sentence, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stated that the final decision will be upto the Awami League leader.

“She came under different circumstances, and now circumstances are different. It is upto her to decide,” said EAM Jaishankar at the 23rd Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Sheikh Hasina fled to India and has been living in exile since August 2024 after student-led protests led to the fall of the government in Bangladesh. Earlier this year, a tribunal court in Dhaka sentenced Hasina and her former interior minister with a death penalty for “crimes against humanity” during the student movement.

“After October 2024, when the Kazhan meeting happened between PM Modi and President Xi – since then, by and large border areas have remained stable. Patrolling have mostly resumed and are taking place normally. Peace and tranquility on the border areas is a key requisite to have good relationships,” said Jaishankar at HTLS 2025.

The EAM’s remarks comes after a key visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to China for the SCO Summit 2025. Ealrier this year, New Delhi and Beijing moved to renew their ties, five years after a pause in diplomacy due to the Galwan border clash.

Both India and China have resumed direct flights, visas for tourists and more as part of their efforts to renew relations.

When asked whether if the ties with the US are moving from strategic alignment to a more transactional nature, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stated that with the current administration under President Donald Trump, trade is the most important issue.

“Trade is the most important issue there, central to the thinking in Washington, much more than previous administrations,” the EAM said, adding that India will now be working to meet the requirement but “on reasonable terms”.

“Diplomacy is not about pleasing everyone else, it is about defending our national interest and what my country and my people believe in,” he said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Speaking on the potential trade deal between the United States and India, EAM Jaishankar stated that there are chances that the deal will happen “soon,” but did not specify when.

India and US have been in a engaged in negotiations for the past year to try and establish a bilateral trade agreement with the Trump administration. Currently, India has also been slammed with 25 percent tariffs, with an additional 25 percent slapped on as a “penalty” for New Delhi’s purchase of Russian oil.

Speaking on the trade deal, the senior BJP leader added that the negotiations needs to be extremely judicious and needs to take into consideration what is best for the Indian consumer, middle class and country.

HTLS 2025: Speaking on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit and growing tensions with the United States, EAM Jaishankar has stated that the Russian leader’s visit should not and will not complicate ties with Washington DC.

Speaking at HTLS 2025, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar stated that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s visit to India allowed both New Delhi and Moscow to reimagine and strengthen their economic ties.

“India-Russia economic ties had not kept pace. This (Putin) visit was about reimagining that relationship, and building facets that it lacked,” said EAM at the 23rd Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2025, External Affairs Minister Dr. S Jaishankar addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India and stated that it is integral for India to maintain a strong relationship in today’s geopolitical environment, which includes Russia, which has been a steadfast ally for India.

“For a big country like us, it is very crucial that our key relationships are all in good repair. It is important that we maintain good relationship with as many players as possible. That we have that choice. That is foreign policy in a nutshell,” said the EAM.

Hugh Grant confessed that he is not well versed with Indian cinema, and has not watched many Bollywood films, but said he’d ‘love to do one’. The actor shared, “I love song and dance now. It keeps cropping up in my films, like in Paddington 2. There is nothing better than a song and dance coming together in film.”

When Rahul Khanna asked him who he would love to act opposite, the actor named Moon Moon Sen, Shabana Azmi, and Supriya Pathak.

Talking about transformation and change, particularly in filmmaking, Hugh Grant touched upon the recent news of Netflix purchasing Warner Bros Discovery for $72 billion. “I don’t know. For those of us who love theatrical experience, that’s another bad news,” the actor said.

Saying that he blames cell phones ‘for everything’, the actor said, “My hope in all things is that we get bored of digital experiences, and return to real life experiences.”

Talking about his recent acting career and gigs, Hugh Grant touched upon the debate of theatrical vs streaming. “It’s a little bit difficult. I love films in cinemas, made on celluloid. I have found it very hard to fall in love with streaming. I hate streaming. It’s sad that people watch it sitting at home on a TV or on their iPhone,” said the British actor.

Grant said that he finds himself unable to excited for streaming projects nowadays. “A lot of offers come on streaming, and I feel tired. I can’t get excited for it,” he said.

The 55-year-old spoke about his transition from romantic hero to character artiste. “I wasn’t confident being a romantic leading man. I need a big mask. I have been much more confident in the last 10-15 years being killers and freaks,” he said, at which Rahul Khanna reminded him he played the Oompa Loompas as well.

Talking about his turn as evil characters in recent films like Heretic, Hugh Grant said, “When you say a baddie, the absolute key is not to play the badness, it’s to find the heart of them, and to find the history. What happened to make them that way, and then you play someone who has no idea they are bad. That makes it more interesting than a moustache twirling baddie.”

The British actor said that his father, a soldier, was born in British India in 1928. “My father was a soldier. In fact, he was born in India. I had to find his birth certificate, and it was really tough. It was some obscure town in the north of India. It may well be Pakistan now,” said the actor. Hugh added, “He was born in either India or Pakistan. I guess that makes me half Indian, really.”

The actor talked about his first visit to India back in 1988, when he shot La Nuit Bengali (The Bengali Night) in Kolkata (then Calcutta). “I short a very arty film in 1988 in Calcutta. It never really had much of a release. I had to pay to see it myself.” Speaking about his experience of filming in India, he said, “I thoroughly enjoyed being in Calcutta. It was a culture shock, but I absolutely loved it.”

After Justice Surya Kant, the next speaker on the stage is British actor Hugh Grant. One of the most successful and popular actors in world cinema, Hugh Grant has been called one of the 50 greatest actors in cinema. A winner of BAFTA and Golden Globes, Hugh Grant will be in conversation with Indian actor Rahul Khanna.

Speaking at HTLS 2025, CJI Surya Kant stated that the judiciary will have to adapt to tackle the “newer challenges” of digital arrests, scam and other cyber crime.

“In such cases, the victim can be in India but the perpetrator or criminal may be out of India, on some island, we don’t know where,” said the CJI.

“Until we figure out and understand how a crime like this is carried out, the judiciary will not be able to tackle such cases and deliver justice. For this, it is necessary for the judiciary to adapt and learn,” he added while speaking at the Leadership summit.

Speaking on one of his key priorities as CJI, Justice Surya Kant stated that he would be working towards sensitising the district judiciaries in order to improve timeline and predictability in the system.

“For this, we plan to introduce training programmes through the judicial academy platforms and high court platforms,” said CJI at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Speaking to Hindustan Times’ National Legal Editor Utkarsh Anand, CJI Surya Kant stated that in 2025, the judiciary is facing new challenges, such as the rise in digital arrest and scam cases.

“No one thought that there will be cases of digital arrest. We need to have training programs regularly, and update our judicial officers with the newer challenges and how to deal with them correctly,” said CJI at HTLS 2025.

Born in 1962, Justice Surya Kant rose through the Hisar courts to become Haryana’s youngest Advocate General at the age of 38, and then to the Bench in 2004.

Elevated to the Supreme Court in 2019, Justice Kant has authored critical judgments across constitutional, criminal and administrative law, and served on key Constitution benches, including the Article 370 case and the recent presidential reference on gubernatorial powers.

Justice Kant, who is widely regarded as a consensus-builder, combines sharp legal insight with a deep social conscience, a key trait shaped by his early struggles and lifelong commitment to justice.

Kant took over as the 53rd Chief Justice of India on November 24, 2025, succeeding Justice BR Gavai.

Speaking at HTLS 2025, CJI Surya Kant stated that his first priorities as Chief Justice of India will be to work towards a “predictable timeline and the unification of the national judicial policy based on early resolution of pending cases.”